NASA's New Capsule at Launch Pad for Test Flight

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NASA's new Orion spacecraft is now at the launch pad for next month's test flight.

The spacecraft was moved 22 miles overnight at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and reached the launch pad early Wednesday. It was then hoisted into place on top of a Delta IV rocket for the Dec. 4 launch.

The test flight will last just over four hours and propel the unmanned capsule 3,600 miles away from Earth, before returning it for a splashdown in the Pacific.

Future Orions are meant to carry astronauts on missions of deep-space exploration, including trips to Mars. Astronauts are expected to start flying on Orion in 2021. The capsules are built for four passengers, one more than the old Apollo spacecraft.

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NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/orion/index.html

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NASA's New Capsule at Launch Pad for Test Flight

Google Inks Billion-Dollar Deal for NASA's Moffett Airfield

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Moffett Federal Airfield includes about 1,000 acres of land on South San Francisco Bay.

NASA this week signed a lease with Google subsidiary Planetary Ventures for Moffett Federal Airfield (MFA) and its historic Hangar One.

The deal will save the space agency about $6.3 million annually in maintenance and operation costs, and provide a hefty $1.16 billion in rent over the 60-year lease term.

"As NASA expands its presence in space, we are making strides to reduce our footprint here on Earth," Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. "We want to invest taxpayer resources in scientific discovery, technology development and space explorationnot in maintaining infrastructure we no longer need."

"We look forward to rolling up our sleeves to restore the remarkable landmark Hangar One, which for years has been considered one of the most endangered historic sites in the United States," said David Radcliffe, vice president of real estate and workplace services at Google.

Hangar One (pictured) is home to a fleet of private jets, including those owned by company execs Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt.

Since 2007, Google had a contract to rent space at Moffett Airfield, as well as secure fuel at $1 per gallon less than other private jet owners. But NASA declined to renew the agreement last fall, and instead solicited bids for the space.

Planetary Ventures in February was selected by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and NASA as the "preferred" company to manage the California-based airfield.

Currently maintained by NASA's Ames Research Facility Center in Moffett Field, MFA includes about 1,000 acres of land on South San Francisco Bay, which includes three hangars, and airfield flight operations building, two runways, and a private golf course.

The new lease will see Planetary Ventures invest more than $200 million in capital improvements to the property, including re-skinning and protecting Hangar One, as well as rehabilitating Hangars Two and Three, upgrading the existing golf course, and creating a public use/education facility.

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NASA Highlights Mission Advances at Supercomputing Conference

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From our home planet to the far reaches of space, NASA will highlight science and engineering mission advances enabled by agency supercomputers at SC14, the international supercomputing conference, Nov. 16-21, 2014 in New Orleans.

Inside the NASA exhibit at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center at 900 Convention Center Boulevard, presenters will unveil on a 10-foot-wide hyperwall stunning new high-definition movies showing:

-- Unprecedented global maps of the ocean and sea-ice incorporating four years of observational data to address questions such as how our ocean takes up and releases heat;

-- A massive two-year Nature Run simulating Earths weather at local scales much finer than the highest-resolution global weather models that will help NASA design new satellite instruments;

-- Computational analysis supporting acoustic testing to ensure a safe lift-off for the Space Launch System, NASAs next heavy-lift rocket for deep space exploration; and-- The most realistic galaxy simulations ever produced, giving us a better understanding of cosmic mysteries including how dark matter behaves and how black holes evolve.

At SC14, NASA technology experts will also discuss upgrades to its two leading supercomputers. The NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS), located at the agencys Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, is doubling the capability of its Discover supercomputer by installing SGI Rackable clusters using 14-core Intel E5-2697v3 (Haswell) processors--with a total of 47,040 new cores. By years end, Discover will have 62,400 cores and a peak performance of more than 2.6 quadrillion floating-point operations per second (petaflops). The new cores will primarily support NASA efforts to assess the credibility of downscaled climate projections, which use the results from global climate models to drive higher-resolution regional models.

The NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, is home to the Pleiades supercomputer, which supports the full spectrum of agency science and engineering missions. This fall, NAS expanded Pleiades to include the latest generation of SGI ICE X systems using 12-core Intel Xeon E5-2680v3 (Haswell) processors--with a total of 25,920 new cores. After the expansion, Pleiades has 198,432 cores and a peak performance of nearly 4.5 petaflops.

The 35 demonstrations in NASA's exhibit at booth #2739 represent work by scientists, engineers, and technologists at seven NASA locations: Ames Research Center; Glenn Research Center, Cleveland; Goddard Space Flight Center; Headquarters, Washington, D.C.; Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California; Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia; and Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama; along with university and corporate partners.

In addition to the exhibit, NASA will co-lead SCs inaugural HPC Matters plenary, with NAS Division Chief Piyush Mehrotra as a speaker, and agency staff will present at several technical program and workshop sessions.

Media attending SC14 who wish to schedule onsite interviews must contact Jill Dunbar of Ames by email atjill.a.dunbar@nasa.govor by phone at 408-203-8048, or Jarrett Cohen of Goddard by email atjarrett.s.cohen@nasa.govor by phone at 301-257-9595.

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InVivo Therapeutics

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Nano cap InVivo Therapeutics (OTCQB:NVIV) continued its up move today with shares rising38%on a 10x surge in volume. Prices have almost tripled in a month as investor interest builds over its Neuro-Spinal Scaffold for the treatment of acute spinal cord injury. The first patient to receive the device is a 25-year old Scottsdale, AZ man who broke his back in a dirt bike accident last month. Although it's too early to gauge the success of the implant some researchers and clinicians believe it has great promise. In late October, the FDA approved an expansion of clinical trial sites from six to 20 and broadened patient eligibility criteria. After today's action, InVivo's market cap is $133M which is comparable to other regenerative medicine firms working on spinal cord injury therapies. For comparison purposes, the market valuations of Neuralstem (NYSEMKT:CUR), Asterias Biotherapeutics (NYSEMKT:AST) and StemCells (NASDAQ:STEM) are $256M, $125M and $80M, respectively. Share this with a colleague

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Nanofilm Serves as Artificial Retina

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Israel-based Nano Retina made some noise a few years back with its development of so-called nanoelectrodes that interface with the eyes bipolar neurons and restart neural stimulation, allowing for messages to go to the brain. The nanoelectrodes served as a kind of artificial retina.

Since then it doesnt appear that Nano Retina has had much more to report on the development of its implantable device, at least from what its website reveals. But it other Israeli researchers do, in a paper published in the journalNano Letters. The teamfrom Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Centers for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and Newcastle University combined semiconductor nanorods and carbon nanotubes to create a wireless, light-sensitive, flexible film that could potentially act in the place of a damaged retina.

The researchers useda plasma polymerized acrylic acid midlayer to make covalent bonds with the semiconductor nanorods directly onto neuro-adhesive, three-dimensional carbon nanotube surfaces.

The researchers have tested the device in achicks retinathat in normal conditions would not have responded to light. These tests demonstrated that the flexible film absorbed light, which then triggered neuronal activity in the chick.

The researchers claim that this film is more durable, flexible and efficient, as well as better able to stimulate neurons, compared to other competitive devices. While there have been a number of approaches to creating artificial retinas to address diseases of the retina, such as macular degeneration, the stumbling block has largely been getting the device to fit inside the eye itself.

This is why solutions such as Nano Retinas nanoelectrodes have been so attractive. It would seem, basedNano Retinas reticence since itsinitial announcement, that the engineering issues are significant even with a nanoscale solution. Whether this latest research can find a way around them remains to be seen.

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Nanofilm Serves as Artificial Retina

Scientists Develop Scoring Scheme That Predicts Ability of Cancer Cells to Spread to Other Parts of the Body

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Newswise Scientists at the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and their collaborators have developed a scoring scheme that predicts the ability of cancer cells to spread to other parts of the body, a process known as metastasis. This system, which is the first of its kind, opens up the possibility to explore new treatments that suppress metastasis in cancer patients. The findings were published in EMBO Molecular Medicine in September.

Led by Professor Jean Paul Thiery, Senior Principal Investigator, and Dr Ruby Huang, Principal Associate, both from CSI Singapore, the scientists developed a scoring scheme which monitors the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) mechanism. This process was shown to play a role in a large number of cancer-related events, including cancer invasion, metastasis, and chemo-resistance. To date, there are no existing tools to systematically quantify the EMT status of tumours. The newly-developed EMT scoring is thus a promising, versatile tool for investigating EMT roles and dynamics in the progression, treatment response and survival across different types of cancer. It can also be integrated with other molecular tests, such as the detection of mutations of cancer genes, to help identify patients at higher risks for treatment failure and decreased survival.

EMT mechanism and cancer metastasis

Cancer metastasis is responsible for 90 per cent of cancer deaths. One of the mechanisms of metastasis is through the EMT process, where tumour cells lose adhesion contacts with their neighbouring cells at the primary tumour site, and gain the ability to move to a secondary site. The ability to stay in tight contact is an important feature of epithelial cells whereas the ability to gain movement is a characteristic of mesenchymal cells. Tumour cells which undergo the EMT process lose their epithelial features and gain invasive, migratory properties typical of mesenchymal cells.

The EMT mechanism has a varying impact on different populations of cancer cells as they respond differently to the EMT cues. Not every cancer cell will undergo the same degree of loss of cell adhesion ability or gain the ability to move spontaneously, which is known as motility. As a result, tumours from different patients will exhibit a wide range of differences in the status of their EMT. To determine with precision the EMT status of the tumour, the research team developed a quantitative modelling system.

How the EMT scoring scheme was developed

In this study, the researchers utilised a total of 13,000 samples from publicly available databases containing gene expression information for more than 15 different types of cancers. A computational modelling scheme of EMT was established to define tumours having the most epithelial features and tumours having the most mesenchymal features. Subsequently, the tumours were rated on a continuous spectrum of different EMT scores. Tumours with mixed epithelial and mesenchymal features are at the in-between state. This transitional state signifies cancer cell populations that might become truly mesenchymal. Patients who have tumours at this intermediate state may be at higher risks compared to those with tumours at the epithelial state.

The clinical information from the databases, including patient survival and treatment responses, was compared against the EMT scoring scheme. The research team showed that the EMT scoring they developed has a good correlation with previously published, cancer-specific EMT signatures. They used this scoring scheme to establish an EMT spectrum across various cancers and noted good correlation between cancer cell lines and tumours. The scientists concluded that this scoring scheme may enable the objective and systematic investigation of EMT in cancer progression, survival and throughout the clinical response to therapy.

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Scientists Develop Scoring Scheme That Predicts Ability of Cancer Cells to Spread to Other Parts of the Body

Brain protein influences how the brain manages stress; suggests new model of depression

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

12-Nov-2014

Contact: Elizabeth Dowling newsmedia@mssm.edu 212-241-9200 The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine @mountsinainyc

The brain's ability to effectively deal with stress or to lack that ability and be more susceptible to depression, depends on a single protein type in each person's brain, according to a study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published November 12 in the journal Nature.

The Mount Sinai study findings challenge the current thinking about depression and the drugs currently used to treat the disorder.

"Our findings are distinct from serotonin and other neurotransmitters previously implicated in depression or resilience against it," says the study's lead investigator, Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD, Nash Family Professor, Chair of the Department of Neuroscience and Director of the Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "These data provide a new pathway to find novel and potentially more effective antidepressants."

The protein involved in this new model of depression is beta-catenin (B-catenin), which is expressed throughout the brain and is known to have many biological roles. Using mouse models exposed to chronic social stress, Mount Sinai investigators discovered that it is the activity of the protein in the D2 neurons, a specific set of nerve cells (neurons) in the nucleus accumbens (NAc), the brain's reward and motivation center, which drives resiliency.

Specifically, the research team found that animals whose brains activated B-catenin were protected against stress, while those with inactive B-catenin developed signs of depression in their behavior. The study also showed suppression of this protein in brain tissue of depressed patients examined post mortem.

"Our human data are notable in that we show decreased activation of B-catenin in depressed humans, regardless of whether these individuals were on or off antidepressants at the time of death," says the study's co-lead investigator, Caroline Dias, an MD-PhD student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "This implies that the antidepressants were not adequately targeting this brain system."

In the study, researchers blocked B-catenin in the D2 brain cells in mice that had previously shown resilience to depression and found the animals became susceptible to stress. Conversely, activating B-catenin in stress mice bolstered their resilience to stress.

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PUB HTML5 Issued A Digital Newspaper Software Solution for News Publishers

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(PRWEB) November 13, 2014

For creators of digital newspapers, digital newspaper software by PUB HTML5 is the one-stop solution for all publication needs. Through intuitive software design and simple but powerful tools, PUB HTML5 enriches any digital newspaper and transforms it into an online media experience.

Most digital newspapers dont really feel like newspapers. Some are just articles on a web page, others are just static PDFs, said Jason Chen, chief technology officer for the company. With PUB HTML5, a digital newspaper is presented in a crisp, flip-book fashion. You can actually see the pages turning. Its really refreshing.

PDF to HTML5 converter technology is just one of the offerings within the multi-function software suite. PUB HTML5 users are capable of uploading PDFs and other documents. Once the document is uploaded, viewers can take advantage of features such as pre-designed templates and a page and animation editor.

PUB HTML5 was designed with the digital newspaper community in mind. Users are capable of publishing their product among their work colleagues, subscribers, or the general public. Everything from e-magazines to e-catalogs can use advanced flip-book technology to give that extra edge in a competitive marketing environment.

Something indescribable was lost with the advent of the digital newspaper, Chen said. We really believe the PUB HTML5 software brings some of that magic back. A newspaper doesnt have to be static, and with our software, it isnt.

PUB HTML5 is a leading digital publication solution that enables users to upload digital publications and transform them into engaging media experiences compatible with PC, tablet, and mobile devices. Since 2010, it has hosted over 260,000 publications and more than 30,000 organizations and individuals have used the software. PUB HTML5 is headquartered in Hong Kong. For more information, please visit the official PUB HTML5 website.

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PUB HTML5 Issued A Digital Newspaper Software Solution for News Publishers