What capabilities are needed to push space technology forward? See what NASA has planned...
What capabilities are needed to push space technology forward? See what NASA has planned... Facebook.com/zeitgeistinarabic Help us caption translate this video! http://amara.org/v/GUCV/
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What capabilities are needed to push space technology forward? See what NASA has planned... - Video
NASA Astronaut Twins Set for Space Study
NASA is set to launch a mission to understand the effects of long-haul space travel on humans by comparing a set of twin brothers, Mark and Scott Kelly. Photo: NASA.
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Jim Adams, NASA, USA Technology: How investing in space is changing your life on Earth
Scifest Africa 2015 Lecture.
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Jim Adams, NASA, USA Technology: How investing in space is changing your life on Earth - Video
NASA #39;s New Breed of Technology (Official Video HD)
NASA #39;s New Breed of Technology (Official Video HD)
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Identical twins to help NASA understand effects of space travel on human body
A pair of identical twins is aiming to help the US space agency gain a better understanding of the effects of long-term space travel on human body, with a special experiment. The twins are...
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Identical twins to help NASA understand effects of space travel on human body - Video
IMAGE:The NASA-funded MinXSS CubeSat will launch in late 2015 to study soft X-rays from the sun. There have not yet been long term studies of these soft X-rays, but observations... view more
At any given moment, our sun emits a range of light waves far more expansive than what our eyes alone can see: from visible light to extreme ultraviolet to soft and hard X-rays. Different wavelengths can have different effects at Earth and, what's more, when observed and analyzed correctly, those wavelengths can provide scientists with information about events on the sun. In 2012 and 2013, a detector was launched on a sounding rocket for a 15 minute trip to look at a range of sunlight previously not well-observed: soft X-rays.
Each wavelength of light from the sun inherently carries information about the kind of process that emitted the light, so looking at soft X-rays provides a new way to figure out what is happening on our closest star. For example, the sun's atmosphere, the corona, is 1,000 times hotter than its surface, and scientists do not yet understand the details of why. The soft X-ray detector brought home data showing that a significant amount of soft X-rays - more than expected - were seen when there are even a small amount of magnetically complex sunspots. Identifying what process within these magnetically active regions contributes to the great increase in soft X-rays could hold clues for what's helping to heat the corona. A paper on these results appeared in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on March 18, 2015.
"Not only did we gather measurements that haven't been made routinely," said Amir Caspi, first author on the paper and a solar scientist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who worked at the University of Colorado in Boulder during the course of this study. "The detector we used also allowed us to gather the best measurements so far made in this energy range."
This soft X-ray detector hitched a ride into space on a NASA sounding rocket. During a 15 minute total flight, sounding rockets have about six minutes of time to gather data from space. The soft X-ray detector and its related components are only about the size of a pack of cards, so it could easily fly on board a rocket carrying another experiment - in this case, one that helps calibrate the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment, or EVE, on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. Sounding rockets and combining missions on a single launch vehicle provide an opportunity to conduct world-class science with a lower price tag.
The soft X-ray detector flew first on June 23, 2012, and again on October 21, 2013.
During both flights, there were only a few complex active regions on the sun's surface - indeed, very few during the 2012 flight. Yet, in both flights the detector saw 1000 times more soft X-rays than had been seen by another experiment in 2009. Even a slight extra amount of solar activity in the form of these active regions, led to substantially more output in the soft X-ray wavelengths.
Wavelengths of light correlate to particular temperatures of material on the sun, and this abundance of soft X-rays points to clouds of hot - 5 to 10 million degrees - gases above the active regions that wasn't present during the 2009 measurements when there were no active regions on the sun. That kind of information makes it clear that different heating mechanisms occur on the quiet sun and active regions, opening the door to determining the differences. One theory for the source of this mysterious heating is that numerous tiny explosions called nanoflares are constantly erupting on the sun. Nanoflares are too small to be seen by our telescopes, but powerfully energetic nonetheless. The soft X-rays might well be a result of nanoflares, thus giving us a way of investigating them.
The new soft X-ray data differed from previous data studies in another respect as well. By parsing out the amounts of each individual wavelength of light gathered, the team could identify what elements were present in the corona. Typically, the abundance of some of these atoms in the corona is greater than at the sun's surface. But not so in these recent observations. The mix of material in the corona was more similar to the mix seen at the solar surface, suggesting that some material from the surface was somehow rising up higher into the atmosphere.
"The difference we see in the abundances of the elements compared to previous studies suggest there may be a link between the heating mechanism and the coronal composition," said Caspi.
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IMAGE:Infrared images from instruments at Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO, left) and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope document the outburst of HOPS 383, a young protostar in the Orion star-formation complex.... view more
Credit: E. Safron et al.; Background: NASA/JPL/T. Megeath (U-Toledo)
Using data from orbiting observatories, including NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and ground-based facilities, an international team of astronomers has discovered an outburst from a star thought to be in the earliest phase of its development. The eruption, scientists say, reveals a sudden accumulation of gas and dust by an exceptionally young protostar known as HOPS 383.
Stars form within collapsing fragments of cold gas clouds. As the cloud contracts under its own gravity, its central region becomes denser and hotter. By the end of this process, the collapsing fragment has transformed into a hot central protostar surrounded by a dusty disk roughly equal in mass, embedded in a dense envelope of gas and dust. Astronomers call this a "Class 0" protostar.
"HOPS 383 is the first outburst we've ever seen from a Class 0 object, and it appears to be the youngest protostellar eruption ever recorded," said William Fischer, a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The Class 0 phase is short-lived, lasting roughly 150,000 years, and is considered the earliest developmental stage for stars like the sun.
A protostar has not yet developed the energy-generating capabilities of a sun-like star, which fuses hydrogen into helium in its core. Instead, a protostar shines from the heat energy released by its contraction and by the accumulation of material from the disk of gas and dust surrounding it. The disk may one day develop asteroids, comets and planets.
Because these infant suns are thickly swaddled in gas and dust, their visible light cannot escape. But the light warms dust around the protostar, which reradiates the energy in the form of heat detectable by infrared-sensitive instruments on ground-based telescopes and orbiting satellites.
HOPS 383 is located near NGC 1977, a nebula in the constellation Orion and a part of its sprawling star-formation complex. Located about 1,400 light-years away, the region constitutes the most active nearby "star factory" and hosts a treasure trove of young stellar objects still embedded in their natal clouds.
A team led by Thomas Megeath at the University of Toledo in Ohio used Spitzer to identify more than 300 protostars in the Orion complex. A follow-on project using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, called the Herschel Orion Protostar Survey (HOPS), studied many of these objects in greater detail.
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There was no tape draped across a finish line, but NASA is celebrating a win. The agencys Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity completed its first Red Planet marathon Tuesday -- 26.219 miles (42.195 kilometers) with a finish time of roughly 11 years and two months.
"This is the first time any human enterprise has exceeded the distance of a marathon on the surface of another world," said John Callas, Opportunity project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "A first time happens only once."
The rover team at JPL plans a marathon-length relay run at the laboratory next week to celebrate.
The long-lived rover surpassed the marathon mark during a drive of 153 feet (46.5 meters). Last year, Opportunity became the long-distance champion of all off-Earth vehicles when it topped the previous record set by the former Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 moon rover.
"This mission isn't about setting distance records, of course; it's about making scientific discoveries on Mars and inspiring future explorers to achieve even more," said Steve Squyres, Opportunity principal investigator at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "Still, running a marathon on Mars feels pretty cool."
Opportunity's original three-month prime mission in 2004 yielded evidence of environments with liquid water soaking the ground and flowing on planets surface. As the rover continued to operate far beyond expectations for its lifespan, scientists chose the rim of Endeavour Crater as a long-term destination. Since 2011, examinations of Endeavour's rim have provided information about ancient wet conditions less acidic, and more favorable for microbial life, than the environment that left clues found earlier in the mission.
JPL manages the Mars rover projects for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Mars Exploration Rover Project, NASA's newer Curiosity Mars rover, and three active NASA Mars orbiters are part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, which seeks to characterize and understand Mars as a dynamic system, including its present and past environment, climate cycles, geology and biological potential. In parallel, NASA is developing the human spaceflight capabilities needed for its journey to Mars.
For more information about Opportunity, visithttp://www.nasa.gov/rovershttp://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov
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NASA's Opportunity Mars Rover Finishes Marathon, Clocks in at Just Over 11 Years
Nanotechnology make things invisible
Nanotechnology make things invisible.
By: Iron mhmoud
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(PRWEB) March 25, 2015
The Nanotechnology in Medical Devices Market - By Product (Biochip, Implant Materials, Medical Textiles, Wound Dressing, Cardiac Rhythm Management Devices, Hearing Aid, Retina Implant), Application (Therapeutic, Diagnostic, Research) Global Forecast to 2019
Browse market data tables and in-depth TOC of the nanotechnology-based medical devices market. http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/nanotechnology-medical-device-market-65048077.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on reports.
This report studies the nanotechnology-based medical devices market over the forecast period of 2014 to 2019. The nanotechnology-based medical devices market witnessed healthy growth during the last decade primarily attributed to the rising aging population and increasing government support, globally. However, high costs and time-consuming product approval processes of the nanotechnology-based medical devices are inhibiting the growth of this market to a certain extent.
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In this report, the nanotechnology-based medical devices market is divided on the basis of products, applications, and regions. On the basis of products, the market is categorized into biochips, implantable materials, medical textile and wound dressing, active implantable devices, and others. The implantable materials segment is bifurcated into dental filling materials and bone restorative materials; while the active implantable devices segment is bifurcated into cardiac rhythm management devices, hearing aid devices, and retinal implants. On the basis of applications, the nanotechnology-based medical devices market is categorized into three major segments, namely, therapeutic applications, diagnostics applications, and research applications.
In 2014, the active implantable devices segment accounted for the largest share of the market. Rising incidence of lifestyle and age-related disorders (such as cardiovascular and hearing disorders) has contributed significantly to the growth of the nanotechnology-based active implantable devices market. In addition, availability of insurance coverage and reimbursement for medical procedures, presence of well-structured distribution channels, and growing out-of-pocket healthcare spending are further boosting the growth of the active implantable devices market.
On the basis of regions, North America accounted for the largest share of this market in 2014, followed by Europe, Asia-Pacific, and RoW. However, the Asia-Pacific region is the fastest-growing market for nanotechnology-based medical devices primarily due to the rising aging population, increasing international research collaborations, and increasing nanotechnology R&D expenditure. In addition, large-scale improvements in the healthcare infrastructure of countries such as China, Taiwan, and India are further driving the market in these regions.
Cardiac Monitoring & Cardiac Rhythm Management (CRM) Market [ECG, Implantable Loop Recorder, Holter, Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD), Automated External Defibrillator (AED), Pacemaker, CRT-D, CRT- P] - Global Forecasts to 2017 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/cardiac-monitoring-advanced-technologies-and-global-market-55.html
Browse Related Reports: Biomaterials Market [By Products (Polymers, Metals, Ceramics, Natural Biomaterials) & Applications (Cardiovascular, Orthopedic, Dental, Plastic Surgery, Wound Healing, Tissue Engineering, Ophthalmology, Neurology Disorders)] Global Forecasts to 2017 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/biomaterials-393.html
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18 hours ago by Shaun Mason Axial CT image with i.v. contrast. Macrocystic adenocarcinoma of the pancreatic head. Credit: public domain
Scientists at UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute and Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have combined their nanotechnology expertise to create a new treatment that may solve some of the problems of using chemotherapy to treat pancreatic cancer.
The study, published online in the journal ACS Nano, describes successful experiments to combine two drugs within a specially designed mesoporous silica nanoparticle that looks like a glass bubble. The drugs work together to shrink human pancreas tumors in mice as successfully as the current standard treatment, but at one twelfth the dosage. This lower dosage could reduce both the cost of treatment and the side effects that people suffer from the current method.
The study was led by Dr. Huan Meng, assistant adjunct professor of medicine, and Dr. Andre Nel, distinguished professor of medicine, both at the Jonsson Cancer Center.
Pancreatic cancer, a devastating disease with a five-year survival rate of 5 percent, is difficult to detect early and symptoms do not usually appear until the disease is advanced. As a result, many people are not diagnosed until their tumors are beyond the effective limits of surgery, leaving chemotherapy as the only viable treatment option. The chemotherapy drug most often used for pancreas cancer is gemcitabine, but its impact is often limited.
Recent research has found that combining gemcitabine with another drug called paclitaxel can improve the overall treatment effect. In the current method, Abraxanea nano complex containing paclitaxeland gemcitabine are given separately, which works to a degree, but because the drugs may stay in the body for different lengths of time, the combined beneficial effect is not fully synchronized.
"The beauty of the silica nanoparticle technology is that gemcitabine and paclitaxel are placed together in one special lipid-coated nanoparticle at the exact ratio that makes them synergistic with one another when co-delivered at the cancer site, giving us the best possible outcome by using a single drug carrier," Meng said. "This enables us to reduce the dose and maintain the combinatorial effect."
After the scientists constructed the silica nanoparticles, they suspended them in blood serum and injected them into mice that had human pancreas tumors growing under their skin. Other mice with tumors were given injections of saline solution (a placebo with no effect), gemcitabine (the treatment standard), and gemcitabine and Abraxane (an FDA-approved combination shown to improve pancreas cancer survival in humans).
In the mice that received the two drugs inside the nanoparticle, pancreas tumors shrank dramatically compared with those in the other mice.
Similar comparisons were made with mouse models, in which the human tumors were surgically implanted into the mice's abdomens in order to more closely emulate the natural point of origin of pancreatic tumors and provide a better parallel to the tumors in humans. In these experiments, the tumors in the mice receiving silica nanoparticles shrank more than the comparative controls. Also, metastasis, or tumor spread, to nearby organs was eradicated in these mice.
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Nanotechnology platform shows promise for treating pancreatic cancer
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Newswise To quantify rare tumor markers that will allow oncologists to make prognoses and select therapies, John X.J. Zhang, PhD led a team of bioengineers from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth in demonstrating a novel system that couples nano-engineered particles and microfluidic chips for capturing and manipulating circulating tumor cells (CTCs). The microscale immunoassay can be further interfaced with a fluorescent microscope for cancer cell imaging. Their paper, "Microscale Magnetic Field Modulation for Enhanced Capture and Distribution of Rare Circulating Tumor Cells," was published in Scientific Reports, Nature Publishing Group.
"This project demonstrates that a relatively simple blood test may eventually be able to provide unambiguous information to doctors about particular cancers in individuals," said Zhang.
Live cells represent vital model systems for studying organism development and human disease. Invasive cancers shed tumor cells into the blood and, by detecting those cells at an early stage, physicians will be able to determine a patient's prognosis and best alternatives for therapies. The capture and immunophenotyping of CTCs shed by cancers at an early stage, and postulated as the mechanism of development of recalcitrant metastatic disease, is envisioned to revolutionize risk assessment, treatment selection, response monitoring, and development of novel therapies.
Zhang's team focused on creating a new interface between living cells and hybrid microsystems, which enabled rigorous design, modeling, manufacturing, and validation of high-performance and massively deployable bio-analytical microsystems for point-of-care and globally-relevant diagnostic applications.
"The concept is to use novel cell-machine interfaces, integrated sensing, actuation and biomarker recognition functionalities to isolate these rare cells (1 per 109 hematologic cells) from whole blood to determine malignancy unambiguously," Zhang said. "We will base the quantitative assessment on multiple tumor markers."
The Dartmouth group demonstrated they can effectively combine the benefits of immunomagnetic assay with microfluidic technology for high-throughput CTC screening. This resulted in a high sensitivity assay for increased cell capture rate and reduced cell aggregation that will be suitable for down-stream analyses of CTCs at the single cell level.
Zhang's goal is to bring this technology from the bench to the clinics, enabling doctors to diagnose and manage cancer via simple blood tests. Operationalizing this technology will potentially increase the cure rate for cancers such as breast cancer.
Zhang is Professor at Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. His work in cancer is facilitated by Dartmouth's Norris Cotton Cancer Center where he is a Member of the Cancer Imaging & Radiobiology Research Program.
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Immunomagnetic Assay On-a-Chip Captures, Analyzes Circulating Tumor Cells
Hopital Tenon, Paris- Personalised health care in Urology: from innovation technologies to practice
The translation, from bench to bedside, of knowledge in molecular medicine as well as in technologies for functional imaging and surgical procedures into personalised medicine improve the quality...
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EMC pools enterprise smarts to create data lakes
EMC is pulling assets from its conglomeration of businesses to help customers build data lakes using EMC storage, VMware virtualization and Pivotal big-data smarts. The Federation Business Data Lake debuting Monday will ingest and analyze data from diverse sourcesand may also show how EMC can make the diverse businesses it owns add up to more than the sum of their parts.
New US bill aims to limit use of student data
A new bill to be introduced in Congress on Monday aims to place checks on the collection and possible misuse of student data by tech companies that supply services to schools. The Student Digital Privacy and Parental Rights Act prohibits companies such as online homework portals or email services from using or disclosing students personal information for advertisement purposes, according to The New York Times.
Leaked FTC antitrust report gives EU cover to rule against Google
A leaked report by U.S. Federal Trade Commission staff gives the European Commission political cover to rule against Google as it moves forward with its own antitrust case. Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who is responsible for making a ruling, will make up her own mind, but the 2012 FTC report, which blasts Google, will help dampen criticism that Europe just wants to tie the hands of successful U.S. companies.
Some Cisco IP phones open to unauthorized calls, eavesdropping
Cisco Systems SPA 300 and 500 series Internet Protocol (IP) phones for small businesses have an authentication flaw that could allow remote attackers to make unauthorized calls or listen to audio streams from the affected devices. No patches are currently available, so administrators should put additional safeguards in place to protect the phones, such as strict firewall rules and IP-based access control lists.
Foxconn may make overture to Sharp again
Talks between Foxconn and ailing Sharp could resume, with the Chinese contract manufacturer saying over the weekend that it is willing to again negotiate an investment in the Japanese company, the Wall Street Journal reported. A deal that would make Foxconn a major shareholder in the display maker fell apart in 2013. It was expected to give Foxconn greater access to Sharps LCD manufacturing capacity and advanced technologies.
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There are about 1.3 million apps available for our smartphones and tablets. Many are simply a bad idea. Most are average in use or scope. Fortunately, some innovative developers have changed the way we used to do things for the better. Here are five mind-boggling apps that I know youre going to want.
Preserve old photos
You probably have photo albums and shoeboxes full of old print photos. If you take care of them they should last for decades, but during a move, house fire or natural disaster they might get damaged or destroyed. Plus, if theyre sitting in a box or on the shelf, no one else can enjoy them.
Thats why so many people spend hours scanning photos into a computer to preserve and share them. Unfortunately, scanning is a slow process.
You have to take the photo out of the photobook, put it on a scanner and wait for a while. Once youve scanned it, theres still a lot of work you have to do. You need to crop it, straighten it, color correct and clean up any scanning artifacts.
Now, theres an app that makes preserving print photos a snap, literally. Its called Heirloom (Free; iOS, Android). You simply take a picture of a photo and it does the cropping and color correcting automatically. You can even leave photos in their albums, so you dont risk damaging or losing them.
Once the photo is ready, you can upload it to Facebook, Twitter or another site, or upload it to Heirlooms own social network. You can upload as many photos as you want. So, what are you waiting for?
Get better customer service
How many hours of your life have you spent on hold waiting for customer service? Its probably more than a few. You could be doing much better things with your time.
Thats what makes the FastCustomer app (Free; iOS, Android) such a must-have. Once you call customer service, it waits on hold for you. When the customer service agent picks up, FastCustomer rings you so you can talk to them. How neat is that?
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Summary:Fitbit is rolling out bike tracking and multi-tracker support soon. You can also export your data in TCX format and upload it to your favorite service, making the Fitbit Surge an even better mobile device.
(Image: Matthew Miller, CBSInteractive) Back in November I stated that data accessibility is key to a successful activity tracking system and over the past couple of months selected Fitbit as my preferred ecosystem.
Yesterday, Fitbit announced GPS bike tracking and multi-tracker support. I now have a beta version of this software loaded on the Fitbit Surge and will be taking it out for a bike ride soon.
Fitbit Surge bike tracking is good news and has prompted me to grease my chain and add bike riding to my exercise regime. Even better, I just found out you can export your GPS data as a standard TCX file and back it up or upload it to another service, I prefer RunKeeper, where you may have a long history or network of friends.
Fitbit added this export capability just a couple months after launching the new Fitbit Surge and while I plan to keep using the Fitbit ecosystem to challenge and motivate friends, I will also be exporting my GPS data to RunKeeper where my running friends hang out. Data accessibility is important for those of us who run or ride while using GPS for record keeping and training programs.
Now that the Fitbit Surge has the ability to capture GPS and heart rate data while also tracking daily activity, including sleep, and providing the means to export and archive your GPS data, it is a solid GPS sportwatch available at a reasonable price.
If you enjoy listening to music while you run, you can also strap on or pack along your phone and control music playback from the Fitbit Surge. I don't mind strapping a phone in an armband, but can't stand trying to control music when it is secure and mounted in the band. The Fitbit Surge will let me control this music and I may have just found my new workout companion.
As I pointed out in my review, the Fitbit Surge also provides caller ID and text message notifications so you get a bit of basic smartwatch functionality with the Surge as well. It doesn't provide all the app support of an Apple Watch, but at least you can take it running or biking without a phone and capture GPS data.
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Fitbit adds support for GPS and heart rate data export; Surge now earns 9/10 rating
Battlefield Hardline - their own medicine - knock knock - Graceful exit - Three trophies guide!
Subscribe Like SHAREfactory https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-us/tid=CUSA00572_00.
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