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11月21日 Finally back on line...Large Hadron Collider back online
11月7日 Give These Guys A Hand.....
- Researchers are working on a breakthrough in artificial limb technology -- a prosthetic hand that can actually feel. The SmartHand project is funded by the European Union and is a collaboration between researchers from across the continent. It has produced a prototype motorized prosthetic hand that researchers say gives unprecedented sensory feedback. Fredrik Sebelius, of Lund University, in Sweden, is one of those working on the project. He told CNN that the SmartHand is able to exploit the fact that many amputees experience what he terms a "phantom hand." "If you push the skin on an amputee's forearm, they feel like you are pushing on their phantom fingers," Sebelius told CNN. When an amputee imagines moving a "phantom hand," signals are sent down nerve fibres in the remaining part of the amputated arm to activate muscles that would have moved the fingers. Myolelectric signals from those muscles are recorded by electrodes applied to the forearm and then transmitted to motors in the artificial hand. It's a technique that has been used in prosthetic limbs for decades, but Sebelius says the SmartHand gives much more control than other systems. It also allows sensory information to be detected and transmitted from several sensors in each prosthetic finger, meaning users can actually "feel" objects they hold in the SmartHand. "The big difference between our system and others is the sensory feedback", Sebelius told CNN. The big difference between our system and others is the sensory feedback. "Sensors in the prosthesis pick up tactile information, which is relayed to actuators on the arm that pass on the sensory feedback, and this hasn't been done before," Sebelius gives the example of a pressure sensor on the artificial index finger sending a signal to forearm. By targeting the area of the forearm that activates the part of the brain associated with the index finger, the signal from the finger is "felt" by the brain. He says the prosthesis could be commercially available within two years, but that the current technology is only suitable for amputations below the elbow. Upper arm amputees don't have enough muscles associated with hand movement to control the SmartHand. Martin Twiste, senior lecturer of prosthetics and orthotics at the University of Salford, in England, told CNN that he did not know of any commercially available prosthetic hands that gave this kind of sensory feedback. But he said the challenge with relaying sensory information from a prosthetic hand is sending the signals to the right place. "Any sensory information from the prosthetic hand has to be fed back to the residuum (remainder of the amputated arm) and then to the brain," he told CNN. "The difficulty is where do you feed it back to?" "If you have several electrodes on the residuum it's very difficult to place the electrodes accurately enough for the amputee to distinguish, say, the index finger from the middle finger." One potential solution for upper arm amputees being explored by U.S. firm Deka Research and Development is to control an artificial arm using foot pedals. Another method uses "Targeted Muscle Reinnervation," a technique developed by Dr Todd Kuiken at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. This involves transferring the remaining nerves from an amputated limb to other muscles -- for example the pectoral muscle in the chest. That means that when someone thinks about moving their amputated hand, they activate the muscle in their chest, and the myolelectric signals from that muscle can be used to control a prosthetic hand. Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory have developed a prototype prosthetic limb that uses this technique as part of a U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-sponsored project. But another solution is to directly attach electrodes to nerve bundles in the remaining part of the amputated arm, recording signals from the nerves, rather than from muscles. Some of the SmartHand researchers have been working on this technology and Sebelius says developing this kind of "neural interface" is the long-term goal of the project. Although neural interfaces have been trialled in animals, Sebelius says there are a number of problems that have to be overcome before the technology can be made commercially available for humans. "The neural interface has to be implanted in the body, which brings problems of biocompatibility," Sebelius told CNN. "A common problem is for the interface to be rejected by the body, then you get a lot of tissue forming around the interface and it doesn't function correctly." 10月27日 Onward and outward we go, hopefully.....NASA scrubs launch of Ares I-X rocketNASA was unable to launch its unmanned test rocket Ares I-X Tuesday because of cloudy, windy weather, but will try again Wednesday morning, the space agency said.Wednesday's scheduled launch time is 8 a.m. ET, NASA said. NASA had until noon Tuesday to launch the 327-foot rocket -- currently the world's largest -- from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Constellation Program, of which Ares I-X is a part, has been developing new vehicles that would replace space shuttles, which will be phased out in 2010. The flight test is part of NASA's mission to someday return astronauts to the moon and later travel to Mars. If the Constellation Program moves forward, the Orion capsule atop the Ares rocket will not be ready to take astronauts into space until at least 2015, leaving a gap of at least five years in which the only way the United States would be able to put humans in orbit would be by hitching a ride with the Russians. Starting at 8 a.m. ET Tuesday, the original launch target, NASA set subsequent launch times but got no cooperation from the weather. The launch was finally scrubbed shortly before 11:30 a.m. Part of the test rocket mission is for scientists to test three massive main parachutes -- measuring 150 feet in diameter and weighing one ton each -- the largest rocket parachutes ever manufactured. The parachutes are a primary element of the rocket's deceleration system, NASA says. After the rocket is successfully launched, the parachutes are to open at the same time, "providing the drag necessary to slow the descent of the huge solid rocket motor for a soft landing in the ocean," the agency says on its Web site. The two parts of the rocket are to separate at about 130,000 feet. The top of the rocket, known as the upper stage, includes a mock Orion crew capsule and a launch abort system. The upper stage will continue its ascent until gravity forces its return to Earth, where it will fall into the Atlantic Ocean. The launch comes at a critical time, when NASA is waiting for President Obama to decide future funding for the agency. An independent committee reviewing the future of space flight recently reported that the U.S. space program appears to be pursuing goals that exceed current funding. The committee also recommended to the White House that funding for NASA's under-construction international space station should be extended until 2020. 9月20日 The first Earthlike planet discovered outside our solar system is CoRoT-7B...First rocky planet found outside solar systemScientists have discovered the first confirmed Earthlike planet outside our solar system, they announced Wednesday. "This is the first confirmed rocky planet in another system," astronomer Artie Hatzes told CNN, contrasting the solid planet with gaseous ones like Jupiter and Saturn. But "Earthlike" is a relative term. The planet's composition may be similar to that of Earth, but its environment is more like a vision of hell, the project's lead astronomer said. It is so close to the star it orbits "that the place may well look like Dante's Inferno, with a probable temperature on its 'day face' above 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius) and minus-328 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 200 degrees Celsius) on its night face," said Didier Queloz of Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, the project leader. Hatzes, explaining that one side of the body is always facing the star and the other side always faces away, said the side "facing the sun is probably molten. The other side could actually have ice" if there is water on the planet. "We think it has no atmosphere to redistribute the heat," Hatzes told CNN from Barcelona, Spain, where he is attending the "Pathways Towards Habitable Planets" conference. The astronmers were stunned to find a rocky planet so near a star, he said. "We would have never dreamed you would find a rocky planet so close," he said. "Its year is less than one of our days." The planet, known as CoRoT-7b, was detected early last year, but it took months of observation to determine that it had a composition roughly similar to Earth's, the European Southern Observatory said in a statement. Astronomers were able to measure the dimensions of the planet by watching as it passed in front of the star it orbits, then carried out 70 hours of study of the planet's effect on its star to infer its weight. With that information in hand, they were able to calculate its density -- and were thrilled with what they found, Hatzes said. "What makes this exciting is you compare the density of this planet to the planets in our solar system, it's only Mercury, Venus and Earth that are similar," Hatzes, of the Thuringer observatory in Germany, told CNN. They were helped by the fact that CoRoT-7b is relatively close to Earth -- about 500 light years away, in the constellation of Monoceros, the Unicorn. "It's in our solar neighborhood," Hatzes said. "The thing that made it easier is it's relatively close, so it's relatively bright. If this star was much much farther away, we wouldn't have been able to do these measurements." At about five times Earth's mass (though not quite twice as large in circumference), it is the smallest planet ever spotted outside our solar system. It also has the fastest orbit. The planet whizzes around its star more than seven times faster than Earth moves, and is 23 times closer to the star than Mercury is to our sun. The planet was first detected early in 2008 by the CoRoT satellite, a 30-centimeter space telescope launched by the European Space Agency in December 2006, specifically with the mission of detecting rocky planets outside the solar system. At least 42 scientists at 17 institutions on three continents worked on the project. They are publishing their findings in a special issue of the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal on October 22 as "The CoRoT-7 Planetary System: Two Orbiting Super-Earths."8月18日 Finally Some Good News About Cancer...Ultra-tiny 'bees' target tumorsThey're ready to sting, and they know where they're going. They're called "nanobees," and they're not insects -- they're tiny particles designed to destroy cancer cells by delivering a synthesized version of toxin called melittin that is found in bees. "Melittin, which would otherwise result in substantial destruction of your red blood cells and other normal tissues if it were delivered intravenously alone, is completely safe when it's on a nanoparticle," said Dr. Samuel Wickline, director of the Siteman Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Nanobees are one of the latest examples of how nanotechnology may change the way diseases are treated. Nanotechnology encompasses a wide array of innovations that make use of structures that are 100 nanometers or smaller. That means they generally cannot be seen under a regular microscope, but are larger than individual atoms. For example, a nanobee is less than 10 times diameter of a red blood cell, Wickline said. Particles on the nanoscale are small enough to enter cells, but big enough to carry large doses of drugs, said Robert Langer, Institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a leader in the nanotech field. Watch MIT researchers talk about nanotechnology "We are gradually forming a pipeline of nanotechnology-based products," said Piotr Grodzinski, director of the National Cancer Institute's Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, a program that funds eight Centers of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence in the U.S., including Wickline's and Langer's research initiatives. "These things are happening as we speak." There have already been two approved cancer treatments on the market that make use of nanoparticles: ovarian cancer drug Doxil, approved in 1995, and breast cancer drug Abraxane, approved in 2005. Both of these involve medication bound with nanoparticles that circulate in the bloodstream for longer than conventional drugs and are expected to migrate to the tumor site, Grodzinski said. These drugs are being tested in some of the eight clinical trials associated with the NCI nano program. Nanobees, by contrast, are engineered to travel directly to tumor cells without harming any others. They leave the healthy cells alone because the blood vessels around a tumor are like a "postal address" for the nanobees, Wickline said. These vessels express a particular protein to which a substance on the nanobees has a chemical affinity. This principle of targeting harmful cells and leaving healthy cells intact is under development in many labs. It means efficient delivery of large concentrations of drugs, but with fewer side effects, experts say. One hundred trillion nanobees can be delivered in a single dose, and are not difficult to make, Wickline said. Also, scientists do not use real insects, so they're "not decreasing the bee population," he said. So far nanobees have been tested only on mice, with promising results, researchers said. Wickline anticipates this therapy could become widely available in humans in about five years. Dr. Ellen Vitetta, who also works on targeted nanotech cancer therapies at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, found the approach intriguing, but said it will be at least 10 years before something like this gets to the market. That's because what works in mice doesn't always work in humans, as she learned while developing a targeted antibody cancer treatment. "People need to appreciate the time issues and the cost issues and just what sort of tests need to be done," she said. "But it's always fun and exciting to see a new approach, because who knows what's going to end up at the finish line." Langer estimates that his group's nanotechnology technique for prostate cancer could be in clinical trials by the middle of next year. The method involves putting an approved cancer drug, docetaxel, in a nanoparticle that has a homing device to take it directly to the tumor. These nanoparticles are made out of some of the same materials often used for dissolvable sutures, Langer said. In addition to having an "affinity molecule," which targets the tumor cells, these nanoparticles are coated with polyethylene glycol, which helps the particle get to its target without being "eaten" by white blood cells called macrophages. Langer and colleagues have also been involved in a new treatment for ovarian cancer, as described in this month's issue of the journal Cancer Research. The technique has shown success in mice, and could go into clinical trials within one to two years, said lead author Daniel Anderson at MIT. The group has published work on two methods, one using DNA and one using RNA. These particles do not have special targeting antibodies on them, but are injected straight into the abdominal cavity where the cancer cells are likely floating. Health LibraryOther research groups are exploring the potential of carbon nanotubes, cylindrical carbon molecules that also have applications in electronics and other areas. Researchers led by Vitetta have developed a method of heating the nanotubes with infrared light, which then "cooked" and killed cancerous lymphoma cells. Vitetta said she doesn't want to move this treatment forward into humans until the researchers have resolved a number of issues about its potential toxicity. Nanoparticles are also useful in medical diagnosis, researchers have found. Abigail Lytton-Jean, a postdoctoral fellow in Langer's lab, worked at Northwestern University on showing that gold nanoparticles can help detect the presence of DNA. When the nanoparticles are coated with a DNA sequence, the solution changes color in the presence of the corresponding DNA. One possible application of this would be anthrax detection, she said. While a lot of new research is ongoing with nano-sized materials, the particles themselves are not new, and therefore should not cause any more safety concerns than other materials used in medicine, experts say. "There are going to be nanomaterials that are toxic for sure, but I definitely do not think that because something is nano there's any more reason to have alarm," Lytton-Jean said. Many of the NCI-sponsored nano centers, located at universities across the country, have spun off small companies, Grodzinski said. Kerios, which will make the nanobees, and BIND, which will work on Langer's group's prostate cancer therapy, are two of the 25 companies that have arisen from the research. The pharmaceutical giants, meanwhile, are watching what comes out of them, he said. 8月12日 Over 2000 Forest Fires In B.C. This Year......
Wet weather in B.C. sends 1,500 fire evacuees home The forest fire situation in B.C. continues to improve as cool weather and rain quench the flames of hundreds of blazes once burning across the province. About 1,500 people on the northwest shore of Okanagan Lake will get to return home Wednesday after firefighters managed to contain about 75 per cent of the 91-square-kilometre Terrace Mountain fire in the southern Interior. Evacuation orders have also been rescinded for residents of Pemberton Meadows in the southwest region of the province as forestry crews get the upper hand on two wildfires burning nearby. But despite rain and cooler weather, evacuation orders are still in place for several hundred residents of Seton Portage east of Pemberton and for people affected by two wildfires burning south and northwest of Lillooet. Southeastern alerts lifted The last evacuation alert in southeast B.C. has been lifted after the rain and cool temperatures helped crews battling the Galena Bay fire, which is now 40 per cent contained. Emergency services co-ordinator Terry Warren said the alert covered a stretch of highway between Nakusp and Revelstoke. "We had some pretty scary days here - lots of wind, smoke and fire - but it's looking good here now. It might get smoky but it's looking favourable and there is no more alert," Warren said. That is good news for the tourism industry in particular. The Galena Bay fire put the popular Nakusp hot springs resort on alert, sharply reducing local business revenue. Fire danger ratings drop The fire danger rating for much of B.C. is now low or moderate, compared with high or extreme less than two weeks ago. A campfire bans is still in place but fire information officer Gwen Eamer said that's being reviewed each day. "The situation in the southeast has improved significantly. We've had precipitation and haven't seen growth in over a week," Eamer said. While much of the rest of B.C. has had a devastating fire season - more than 2,000 fires were detected across the province - the southeastern region has been below average, with only about three-square kilometres burned in the entire region, officials said. 5月13日 Playing catch in space....Space shuttle catches up to HubbleThe space shuttle Atlantis took up its position Wednesday close to the Hubble Space Telescope, nearing the end of a chase that began almost two days earlier. 
The Hubble Space Telescope hangs above Earth in a 1997 photo taken from the shuttle Discovery. Atlantis is preparing for its robot arm to grab hold of the orbiting telescope at 12:54 p.m. ET. The operation is a delicate dance for the shuttle crew, involving periodic firings of the shuttle's thrusters to align it with the space telescope -- all of this taking place about 350 miles above Earth. Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is commanding the telescope to stow its two high-gain antennas and close a door to protect Hubble's sensitive equipment and mirror. Ultimately, the shuttle will maneuver to within 35 feet of the telescope before capturing it and pulling it into the cargo bay for repairs. Atlantis launched Monday afternoon for NASA's fifth and final repair visit to the telescope. It has been seven years since NASA's last mission to service the Hubble, which was designed to go about three years between fixes. NASA canceled an Atlantis mission to extend Hubble's operational life in January 2004 because the trip was considered too risky in the wake of the 2003 space shuttle Columbia disaster, which killed seven astronauts. That accident was blamed on a hole punched in the front of the wing by debris during liftoff. But public pressure and steps taken to increase shuttle safety led the space agency to reconsider. A survey of Atlantis' outer body after launch revealed that four tiles on the right side have "some dings" in them, flight director Tony Ceccacci said Tuesday. "To me, I'm not the tile expert, but they looked very minor," he said. Ceccacci said tile experts will examine the dings, which are on the wing. Space shuttle Endeavour is on standby in the unlikely event that NASA would need to rescue the Atlantis crew members during their 11-day mission. 4月27日 A Happy Ending Of Sorts..... A Story With A Happy Ending
This nineteen year old ex-cheerleader (now an Air Force Security Forces Sniper) was watching a road that led to a NATO military base, when she observed a man digging by the road. She engaged the target (i.e. she shot him). Turned out he was a bomb maker for the Taliban and he was burying an I.E.D. that was to be detonated when a U.S. patrol walked by 30 minutes later. It would have certainly killed and wounded several soldiers.
The interesting fact of this story is the shot was measured at 725 yards. She shot him as he was bent over burying the bomb. The shot went through his butt and into the bomb which detonated : he was blown to pieces. The Air Force made a motivational poster of her:
(Folks, that's a shot 25 yards longer than 7 football fields!) And the last thing that came out of his mouth was..... his ass. 4月9日 A Nasty Complicated Worm.....Conficker wakes up, updates via P2P, drops payload(CNET) -- The Conficker worm is finally doing something--updating via peer-to-peer between infected computers and dropping a mystery payload on infected computers, Trend Micro said on Wednesday. 
This piece of computer code told the worm to activate on April 1, researchers found.  Researchers were analyzing the code of the software that is being dropped onto infected computers but suspect that it is a keystroke logger or some other program designed to steal sensitive data off the machine, said David Perry, global director of security education at Trend Micro. The software appeared to be a .sys component hiding behind a rootkit, which is software that is designed to hide the fact that a computer has been compromised, according to Trend Micro. The software is heavily encrypted, which makes code analysis difficult, the researchers said. The worm also tries to connect to MySpace.com, MSN.com, eBay.com, CNN.com and AOL.com as a way to test that the computer has Internet connectivity, deletes all traces of itself in the host machine, and is set to shut down on May 3, according to the TrendLabs Malware Blog. Because infected computers are receiving the new component in a staggered manner rather than all at once there should be no disruption to the Web sites the computers visit, said Paul Ferguson, advanced threats researcher for Trend Micro. "After May 3, it shuts down and won't do any replication," Perry said. However, infected computers could still be remotely controlled to do something else, he added. On Tuesday night Trend Micro researchers noticed a new file in the Windows Temp folder and a huge encrypted TCP response from a known Conficker P2P IP node hosted in Korea. "As expected, the P2P communications of the Downad/Conficker botnet may have just been used to serve an update, and not via HTTP," the blog post says. "The Conficker/Downad P2P communications is now running in full swing!" In addition to adding the new propagation functionality, Conficker communicates with servers that are associated with the Waledac family of malware and its Storm botnet, according to a separate blog post by Trend Micro security researcher Rik Ferguson. The worm tries to access a known Waledac domain and download another encrypted file, the researchers said. Conficker.C failed to make a splash a week ago despite the fact that it was programmed to activate on April 1. It has infected between 3 million and 12 million computers, according to Perry. Initially, researchers thought they were seeing a new variant of the Conficker worm, but now they believe it is merely a new component of the worm. The worm spreads via a hole in Windows that Microsoft patched in October, as well as through removable storage devices and network shares with weak passwords. The worm disables security software and blocks access to security Web sites. 4月7日 I would not let this dog get hungry....Dog eats baby goats, survives on remote islandA pet Australian cattle dog swam to shore after going overboard
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Sophie, back at home with her owners, is once again a happy house pet.
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Sophie not only showed amazing adaptability living in the wild, but returning to domestic life — the Griffiths reported the dog’s transition to house dog once again has been seamless.
The dog’s survival story has even animal experts scratching their heads. Australian veterinarian Vicki Lomax told the Brisbane Times that Sophie’s is a hardy breed, but virtually no dog would have been likely to survive what she went through.
“Cattle dogs are probably the most suited type of dog to survive something like this, but it would have been a major ordeal for her,” Lomax said. “Five nautical miles is an incredibly big distance for any type of dog … she is lucky she wasn’t taken by a shark.”
Here's another bad malware threat.....
No joke in April Fool's Day computer worm
A computer-science detective story is playing out on the Internet as security experts try to hunt down a worm called Conficker C and prevent it from damaging millions of computers on April Fool's Day.
This piece of computer code tells the worm to activate on April 1, 2009, researchers at CA found.
The anti-worm researchers have banded together in a group they call the Conficker Cabal. Members are searching for the malicious software program's author and for ways to do damage control if he or she can't be stopped.
They're motivated in part by a $250,000 bounty from Microsoft and also by what seems to be a sort of Dick Tracy ethic.
"We love catching bad guys," said Alvin Estevez, CEO of Enigma Software Group, which is one of many companies trying to crack Conficker. "We're like former hackers who like to catch other hackers. To us, we get almost a feather in our cap to be able to knock out that worm. We slap each other five when we're killing those infections."
The malicious program already is thought to have infected between 5 million and 10 million computers.
Those infections haven't spawned many symptoms, but on April 1 a master computer is scheduled to gain control of these zombie machines, said Don DeBolt, director of threat research for CA, a New York-based IT and software company.
What happens on April Fool's Day is anyone's guess.
More likely, though, said DeBolt, the virus may try to get computer users to buy fake software or spend money on other phony products.
Experts said computer hackers largely have moved away from showboating and causing random trouble. They now usually try to make money off their viral programs.
DeBolt said Conficker C imbeds itself deep in the computer where it is difficult to track. The program, for instance, stops Windows from conducting automatic updates that could prevent the malware from causing damage.
The program's code is also written to evolve over time and its author appears to be making updates to thwart some of the Conficker Cabal's attempts to neuter the worm.
"It is very much a cat and mouse game," DeBolt said.
It's unclear who wrote the program, but members of the Cabal are looking for clues.
First, they know that some recent malware programs have come from Eastern European countries outside the jurisdiction of the European Union, said Patrick Morganelli, senior vice president of technology for Enigma Software.
Worm program authors often hide in those countries to stay out of sight from law enforcement, he said.
In a way, the Conficker Cabal is also looking for the program author's fingerprints. DeBolt said security researchers are looking through old malware programs to see if their programming styles are similar to that of Conficker C.
The prospects for catching the program's author are not good, Morganelli said.
"Unless they open their mouth, they'll never be found," he said.
So, the most effective counter-assault simply may be damage control.
One quick way to see if your computer has been infected is to see if you have gotten automatic updates from Windows in March. If so, your computer likely is fine, DeBolt said.
Microsoft released a statement saying the company "is actively working with the industry to mitigate the spread of the worm."
DeBolt said people who use other antivirus software should check to make sure they've received the latest updates, which also could have been disabled by Conficker C.
The first version of Conficker -- strain A -- was released in late 2008.
That version used 250 Web addresses -- generated daily by the system -- as the means of communication between the master computer and its zombies.
The end goal of the first line was to sell computer users fake antivirus software, said Morganelli.
Computer security experts largely patched that problem by working with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to disable or buy the problematic URLs, he said.
That process-of-elimination approach isn't likely to be effective with Conficker strain C, Morganelli said. The new version will generate 50,000 URLs per day instead of just 250 when it becomes active, DeBolt said.
The first iteration of Conficker is thought to have grown out of a free function for security programs created by Dr. Ronald Rivest, a computer science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"Any technology can be used for good or evil, and this is just an example of that," Rivest said.
Many viruses have taken pieces of benevolent programs and used them for ill. But overall the "open source" environment online promotes computer security far more than it enables hackers, DeBolt said.
"I don't blame the open-source community at all" for virus attacks, he said.
CA said it recently found a piece of code in Conficker C that says the worm will become active on April 1. Previous versions of the malicious software launched on specific dates noted in the program code, so the April Fool's Day launch date is not likely to be a trick, DeBolt said.
"The best minds in the industry are working on this to protect customers," he said. "We're trying to reduce the impact of the April 1 date as best we can. But we know ... this malware will continue to evolve."
There's a lot more to launching shuttles than rolling it out and igniting it....
Behind the scenes at Kennedy Space Center
Going behind the scenes at Kennedy Space Center is like visiting another planet. The employees working on the shuttle fleet speak their own language -- a language made up of acronyms.
The orbiter is maintained in the OPF (orbiter processing facility) before it goes to the VAB (vehicle assembly building), where the ET (external tank) and SRBs (solid rocket boosters) are attached to it.
As NASA prepares for the scheduled launch of the space shuttle Discovery about 9 p.m. Wednesday, Kennedy Space Center employees have been busy keeping the shuttle fleet in tip-top condition. CNN visited the facility recently to learn about shuttle maintenance and launch preparation.
In the orbiter processing facility, the team was readying the orbiter Atlantis, which is scheduled for flight after Discovery's mission to the international space station. Atlantis' first launch was in 1985, and it has flown 29 times.
This processing facility is a hangar where employees thoroughly inspect the orbiter. The vehicle is towed into the building, where it is surrounded by platforms that are several stories high, allowing access to all parts of the craft.
The entry of dirt, dust and debris into the facility is a concern that goes by the acronym FOD, or foreign object debris. There are workers who pass the day wiping down the steel structure with alcohol.
"The minute we go into zero gravity, the astronauts are now breathing it and eating it," said Terry White, a project lead for the United Space Alliance.
Instead of a welcome mat, people entering the orbiter processing facility walk on a piece of sticky tape that picks up dirt and debris from the soles of their shoes. Anyone entering the building must also "tether," or tie eyeglasses on and tape watches to wrists to ensure that loose items are not dropped. Even the smallest item can become a problem in zero gravity.
White explains that something as tiny as a washer could short out an electrical component in the shuttle.
"You know, you get a short in your car, you can pull over to the side of the road. There's no place to pull over up there," White said, a line he has surely used before.
After each flight, the orbiter's engines are removed and sent to another building to be refurbished, and the main tires are replaced.
"The orbiter sees an average of about 4½ million miles in each flight," according to White. "The tires get rolled on the ground less than 10 [miles], and we replace them."
The orbiter's tires are specially made and are slightly larger than the tires on a freight hauling truck. The orbiter touches down on its main landing gear tires, and then the drag chute opens before the nose tires hit the runway.
Because the runway is grooved and the tires slick, the weight of the shuttle puts tremendous stress on the main gear tires, wearing them down after one landing. Since there is less stress on the nose tires, they are usually replaced after two flights.
Atlantis has more than 20,000 small individually numbered tiles attached to its belly to shield the orbiter's body from heat. Some of the tiles experience temperatures up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit during re-entry. White says each one is inspected several times.
"We have quality [control personnel] that do it with their eyes and with flashlights and 10 times magnifying glasses, if required."
The inspectors are looking for any nicks, gauges and other defects. A couple hundred tiles are removed and replaced after each flight.
Another thing White says people don't realize: "There's 600 panels that come on and off as part of processing the orbiter." These panels cover everything from avionics compartments to wiring, and Atlantis has more than 200 miles of wiring on board.
Once the team in the processing facility is finished checking, maintaining and refurbishing the orbiter, it is sent over to the vehicle assembly building (VAB). This is where the orbiter will be "mated" with the solid rocket boosters and the external tank on its final stop before the launch pad.
At 525 feet high and covering 8 acres, the assembly building is one of the largest buildings in the world. The orbiter is towed into the building with precision, as there are only a few inches of clearance between the wings and the building.
Once inside, the vehicle is lifted to a vertical position by a bridge crane. There are four cranes in the building, and two are strong enough to pick up 105 full-grown elephants each.
Crane instructor Del Dewees says it takes two years to train those responsible for lifting and stacking the orbiter. Sitting 467 feet in the air, the crane operator works blindly. And that's the easy job, Dewees said.
"The hard part is the guy down below telling you what to do. You got a ground controller -- he's your eyes; he's your ears; he's everything."
The external tank is the heaviest and largest part of the shuttle. Filled with liquid hydrogen and oxygen, it powers the shuttle's main engines.
Seven minutes into the launch at main engine cutoff, the tank detaches and re-enters the atmosphere in pieces that land in the Indian Ocean. The two solid rocket boosters (SRBs) burn for only the first two minutes of the shuttle's flight.
The orbiter is lowered vertically onto the solid rocket boosters and the external tank to complete the shuttle. This process takes a day and a half, according to Dewees.
Once assembled, the shuttle is 76 feet high and 184 feet long. A "crawler-transporter" moves the massive shuttle to the launch pad. This huge metal platform would take up about eight lanes in a freeway.
While Atlantis sits in the vehicle assembly building, space shuttle Discovery sits on the launch pad, awaiting liftoff. The orbiter can barely be seen more than 12 hours before launch as it is encased in a rotating service structure.
The service structure allows for access to the cargo bay and is used to install payload. The payload can be anything the shuttle is carrying into space, from science experiments to new hardware and components for the space station.
The structure isn't the only thing on the pad for protection; a 24-hour birdwatcher is also keeping an eye on the shuttle.
"They're actually just making sure there are no birds actually getting on to the ET tank to cause any problems," said Christopher Liones, a launch pad manager.
In 1995, a woodpecker caused the delay of Discovery's launch when it pecked holes in the foam insulation on the external tank. Like the tiles, this insulation is part of the shuttle's thermal protection system, protecting the orbiter from heat.
Liones says the birdwatcher on duty is equipped with a horn to scare birds away. The loud noise will usually do the trick, but if that doesn't work, a plan will be devised to safely remove the birds from the vehicle.
When the astronauts enter the shuttle on the day of the launch, they will have a beautiful view. Wednesday's launch is at night, and the astronauts will be able to see the lights of cities up and down the coast. During a daytime launch, the pristine nature reserve and the Atlantic Ocean are visible.
Travis Thompson, a member of the Close Out Crew, one of the last people the astronauts see before liftoff, would know whether they stop and appreciate their last moments on Earth.
When asked whether any astronaut has had a last-minute change of heart, he said, "they do. Sometimes they get up here, and they think about it."
"I won't mention any names," he said, laughing.
This is some good news that we need these days....
Canadians make stem cell breakthrough
Previous methods to create embryonic-like stem cells have used a virus to help transform adult cells into pluripotent stem cells -- cells that can develop into most other cell types. But those methods carried the risk of damaging the cell's DNA. With damaged DNA, the cells often became cancerous or led to abnormalities.
This new method, described online in the journal Nature, uses a novel "wrapping" procedure to deliver specific genes to adult cells to reprogram them into stem cells, without damaging the cell's DNA.
Genetic researchers have long believed that stem cells could be the ticket to finding cures for a host of diseases, since they allow tissue to rebuild itself. The best stem cells come from embryos, which are rich in pluripotent stem cells. But the use of embryonic stem cells has been controversial.
This new simplified method does not require embryos and instead can generate stem cells from many adult tissues, including a patient's own skin cells, allowing for personalized therapies.
It uses a DNA sequence, called a transposon, that can move around within the genome of a cell to extract the cell's DNA and transform it into a stem cell. When it's done the DNA leaves the cell, leaving no trace of itself in the way that viruses sometimes did.
The transposon that seemed to work best is called piggyBac, which has been in use since the 1980s to genetically modify a range of organisms.
In this latest research, Dr. Andras Nagy, from the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, was able to use the piggyBac transposon to create lines of pluripotent stem cells in mouse and then human cells.
Nagy was able to make the breakthrough only after he joined forces with a team led by Dr. Keisuke Kaji from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Regenerative Medicine, at the University of Edinburgh.
Dr Kaji had found a non-viral method to deliver four genes in a single fragment into a cell genome. However, he couldn't figure out how to remove all trace of reprogramming from the genome.
Dr Nagy's group, meanwhile, had developed a system that allowed the removal of inserted genes without leaving a "footprint," but couldn't figure out how to deliver four genes into the same part of the genome.
The teams' breakthrough came when they combined their methods.
The research could transform stem cell technology and accelerate work in regenerative medicine, the field of research focused on finding ways for the human body to repair or replace its own damaged or diseased cells and tissues, says Dr. Jim Woodgett, Director of Research for the Samuel Lunenfeld Institute.
"What's critical about this work is that it makes it much, much easier for labs around the world to create these special cells and it will accelerate discovery," Woodgett told CTV Newsnet.
Dr.Michael Rudnicki of the Stem Cell Network of Canada finds the discovery fascinating and exciting.
"We now have the technology to derive these cells readily and in a way that will facilitate their use clinically," he said. "This is an important finding and is really a breakthrough."
Rudnicki says because the previous viral-based method caused genetic alterations that predisposed the cells to becoming cancerous, many of those cells couldn't be used. With this technique, the cells are undamaged and as good as the stem cells in our body.
"This discovery is going to be widely used," Rudnicki says. "I think it will prove to be the routine method used internationally."
Woodgett believes that within about five years, researchers will be able to use stem cells generated with this new method to research ways of treating kidney disease, heart disease and joint diseases, among others.
"Really, the potential applications are endless. That's why there is so much effort going into this field at this time."
They Shouldn't Have Pissed Marvin off.....
KILLDOZER
Marvin, a man of action, they pissed him off!
52 year old welder Marvin Heemeyer lived in Grunbee Colorado fixing vehicle mufflers. His small repair shop was located near a concrete
factory called Mountain Park. To Marvin and his neighbors' horrors, the owners of Mountain Park decided to expand the factory, forcing the
people living near-by to sell their land to Mountain Park. Sooner or later the factory's neighbors gave up, except for Marvin.
Having tried every way possible, the owners of the factory failed to acquire his land. However all the surrounding land was now owned by
the factory, which resulted in Marvin's shop getting cut off from the rest of the world.
Marvin tried everything in his powers to restore justice. Obviously, the city council and other politicians of the state were on the factory
owners' evil capitalist side.
It's not surprising that Marvin lost the case to the owners, in court. After that Marvin was also given a $2500 fine for not having a
connected sewer line. When paying the fine, Marvin attached a note to the check and ticket that read "Cowards".
He was just one of those who would not give up. On the 4th of June, 2004 during a rainy day Marvin rolled out into
town on a bulldozer reinforced with metal sheets.
He started with the concrete factory, destroying building after building, until the factory was demolished. Then it was the city council's
turn followed by the town hall, then the bank, the public library, the fire station, a warehouse, the local paper and other buildings belonging to the mayor.
Having tried to stop Heemeyer, the police finally understood that Marvin's bulldozer was unstoppable. More than 200 bullets were fired
at the vehicle, causing no harm at all. The police force then decided to battle the titan with hand grenades. Once again their efforts were
useless. Later a vehicle rigged with explosives was put in Marvin's path to destruction; it also had little luck in stopping him.
Marvin returned fire using two semi-automatic .23 caliber rifles and a single .50 caliber semi-automatic rifle through specially designed holes
in the vehicle's front, left and right sides. All the police were able to do, was evacuate 1500 inhabitants (the town's population was
2200) and block all the roads, including a federal highway that led to the town.
destroying the Gambles Mall, the bulldozer suddenly stopped. The only thing that could be heard coming from Marvin’s death machine was smoke out of a damaged radiator. At first the police officers were too afraid to approach the thing. Trying to get Marvin out of his fortress, they had to make a hole in the armor. When they finally got through, Marvin was already dead. He wasn't going to get into the enemy's hands alive. Despite the great damage to property (13 buildings were destroyed, most requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars to be replaced), no one besides Heemeyer was injured; observers noted that Heemeyer appeared to go out of his way to avoid injury to bystanders. The governor said that the city looked as if a tornado had just gone through. Later an investigation was carried out. It was discovered that Marvin's creation was so strong that even a powerful artillery blow would only cause minor damage. The bulldozer was totally covered in sheet metal, with each piece being at least half an inch thick. In places, the vehicle's armor was over one foot thick, consisting of concrete sandwiched between sheets of steel to make ad-hoc composite armor.
To fit the bulldozer with this shell, Marvin had to use a self-made crane. "Lowering the protective armor onto the vehicle, Marvin knew he wouldn't be able to get out"- said police officials. Marvin packed the interior with supplies such as water, food, ammo and a gasmask. To control the killdozer, Marvin used 3 monitors and a couple of video cameras. In an event of the cameras being blinded by dust, they were fitted with air compressors. It took Marvin 2 months to design the Killdozer, and according to sources, 1.5 years to build it. "He was a fine lad", - said the people that were close to Marvin. "They shouldn't have made him angry". "If he was your friend, he was your best friend. And if he was your enemy, well he was your worst and most dangerous enemy." - said Marvin’s friends.
Marvin's war ended at 4:23 PM.
Having just finished
There Aren't A Lot Of Shuttle Flights Left, So I Hope They Can Fix It Soon....
Mission to fix Hubble Telescope postponed
NASA's plans to fly a fifth and final space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope have suffered another set-back.
Atlantis was prepared to launch in September before an onboard computer failed, delaying the mission.
Hubble managers say ground testing of a critical replacement computer that they hope to install on the orbiting telescope is taking longer than previously expected. And that means an additional flight delay.
"Delivery in April to support a May launch, I think is a fair thing to say," said Hubble program manager Preston Burch. "Right now I think we have a very good chance of meeting a readiness date in that time frame."
The additional delay is just the latest dip in an emotional rollercoaster ride for the Hubble team over the past few months.
In late September, astronauts were mere weeks away from launching to Hubble aboard the space shuttle Atlantis, with spacewalks planned to make the telescope more powerful than ever and extend its expected lifespan an additional five years.
That flight had to be postponed when the onboard computer that downlinks scientific data to the ground suddenly failed on September 27th. While that problem has been corrected using a back-up system, NASA managers have decided the computer needs to be completely replaced in order to keep a fully redundant back-up capability available.
A spare computer was built prior to Hubble's launch in 1990, and has been warehoused at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland ever since. Initially, engineers had hoped that spare could be quickly tested, certified "flight ready," and shipped to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to be packed aboard Atlantis in time for a February launch.
But a closer evaluation of the spare shows more than six months of work will be needed to get it ready to fly.
Among other issues, it was partially disassembled other the years so that parts could be used for other systems. It has been largely put back together, but now programming anomalies are cropping up.
And once engineers get it in good working order, it will have to go a battery of environmental tests to make sure it is ready to hold up in the harsh conditions of space. But the engineers are confident that they will eventually overcome all the obstacles.
"We've gotten a lot smarter about the condition of this unit over the last four weeks, said Burch. "We don't want to take any chances in bringing a box up there that isn't going to be 100% working to the absolute best that it can. So we want to take some extra time and make sure that we subject this to a very rigorous test program and we don't want to leave any stones unturned on the way to the launch pad."
Such A Fantastic Machine Too Far From A Fixit Shop.......
Engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland have hit a snag in their efforts to bring the Hubble Space Telescope back on-line after a major equipment failure in space last month.
The Hubble Space Telescope. Image: NASA
Hubble’s Science Instrument Control and Data Handling (SIC&DH) system went down September 27. This is the telescope’s on-board computer that coordinates commands to the various instruments and then downlinks the scientific data to the ground.
While that computer is off-line, most science observations are at a standstill.
The good news is that the computer was built with a fully redundant back-up channel called “Side B” designed to come on-line in the event “Side A” ever failed. Hubble team members at Goddard began a complicated process to switch over to “Side B” on Wednesday. This involved sending comprehensive software commands up to the telescope to essentially take control of Hubble’s suite of telescopes and other sensors through “Side B,” recalibrate all those instruments which went into safe-mode when the computer went down, start and stop gyroscopes, downlink data, and then check the data quality against some older “Side A” samples to make sure all is square.
Problems cropped up somewhere in that process Thursday night. We haven’t been told yet exactly what happened. The team is meeting today to discuss a further troubleshooting plan. We may get additional details later when that meeting ends. I am told they don’t expect the issue to be resolved today.
As noted, the switch-over process is extremely complicated, and it is probably to be expected that they would hit some sort of snag. Hopefully, they will work through it in the coming days and science operations can resume soon.
Even if the switch-over to “Side B” fails (and it is far to soon to go there), the Hubble design team had the foresight 20 years ago to build a spare SIC&DH system, which has been warehoused at Goddard all this time while the original instrument perked along just fine. Astronauts are scheduled to conduct a fifth and and final Hubble servicing mission in the February time frame, and will almost certainly remove and replace the malfunctioning computer with the spare. That mission was supposed to fly this month, but was postponed when the failure occurred to give the ground teams time to check out the spare and astronauts time to train on the removal and replacement procedure (which is apparently a relatively straightforward, two-hour spacewalk task).
If there is any silver lining to this whole thing, it’s that the failure happened before the servicing mission — while there is still the opportunity to fix it. Imagine the disappointment if it had happened right after the astronauts returned!
The More Complicated Things Are, The More Things That Can Go Wrong
'Big bang machine' halted for 2 months
Damage to $10 billion particle collider is worse than previously believed
GENEVA - The world's largest atom smasher — which was launched with great fanfare earlier this month — has been damaged worse than previously thought and will be out of commission for at least two months, its operators said Saturday.
Experts have gone into 17-mile circular tunnel housing the Large Hadron Collider under the Swiss-French border to examine the damage that halted operations about 36 hours after its Sept. 10 startup, said James Gillies, spokesman for CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
"It's too early to say precisely what happened, but it seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two magnets that stopped superconducting, melted and led to a mechanical failure and let the helium out," Gillies told The Associated Press.
Gillies said the sector that was damaged will have to be warmed up well above the absolute zero temperature used for operations so that repairs can be made — a time-consuming process.
"A number of magnets raised their temperature by around 100 degrees," Gillies said. "We have now to warm up the whole sector in a controlled manner before we can actually go in and repair it."
The $10 billion particle collider, in the design and construction stages for more than two decades, is the world's largest atom smasher. It fires beams of protons from the nuclei of atoms around the tunnels at nearly the speed of light.
It then causes the protons to collide, revealing how the tiniest particles were first created after the "big bang," which many theorize was the massive explosion that formed the stars, planets and everything.
Gillies said such failures occur frequently in particle accelerators, but it was made more complicated in this case because the Large Hadron Collider operates at near absolute zero, colder than outer space, for maximum efficiency.
"When they happen in our other accelerators, it's a matter of a couple of days to fix them," Gillies said. "But because this is a superconducting machine and you've got long warmup and cool-down periods, it means we're going to be off for a couple of months."
He said it would take "several weeks minimum" to warm up the sector.
"Then we can fix it," Gillies said. "Then we cool it down again."
CERN announced Thursday that it had shut down the collider a week ago after a successful startup that had beams of protons circling in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions in the collider.
It was at first thought the failure of an electrical transformer that handles part of the cooling was the problem, CERN said. That transformer was replaced last weekend and the machine was lowered back to operating temperature to prepare for a resumption of operations.
But then more inspections were needed and it was determined that the problem was worse than initially thought, said Gillies.
'God particle'
The CERN experiments with the particle collider hope to reveal more about "dark matter," antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. They could also find evidence of a hypothetical particle — the Higgs boson — which is sometimes called the "God particle" because it is believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe.
Smaller colliders have been used for decades to study the makeup of the atom. Scientists once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of an atom's nucleus, but experiments have shown that protons and neutrons are made of quarks and gluons and that there are other forces and particles.
The LHC provides much greater power than earlier colliders.
Its start came over the objections of some who feared the collision of protons could eventually imperil the Earth by creating micro black holes — subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.
Whoever The Skeptics Are, Are Uninformed Nitwits.....
Multibillion-dollar experiment to probe nature's mysteries
Deep underground on the border between France and Switzerland, the world's largest particle accelerator complex will explore the world on smaller scales than any human invention has explored before.
The collider's ALICE experiment will look at how the universe formed by analyzing particle collisions.
The Large Hadron Collider will look at how the universe formed by analyzing particle collisions. Some have expressed fears that the project could lead to the Earth's demise -- something scientists say will not happen. Still, skeptics have filed suit to try to stop the project.
It even has a rap dedicated to it on YouTube.
Scientists say the collider is finally ready for an attempt to circulate a beam of protons the whole way around the 17-mile tunnel. The test, which takes place Wednesday, is a major step toward seeing if the the immense experiment will provide new information about the way the universe works.
"It's really a generation that we've been looking forward to this moment, and the moments that will come after it in particular," said Bob Cousins, deputy to the scientific leader of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, one of six experiments inside the collider complex. "September 10 is a demarcation between finishing the construction and starting to turn it on, but the excitement will only continue to grow."
The collider consists of a particle accelerator buried more than 300 feet near Geneva, Switzerland. About $10 billion have gone into the accelerator's construction, the particle detectors and the computers, said Katie Yurkewicz, spokewoman for CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which is host to the collider.
In the coming months, the collider is expected to begin smashing particles into each other by sending two beams of protons around the tunnel in opposite directions. It will operate at higher energies and intensities in the next year, and the experiments could generate enough data to make a discovery by 2009, experts say.
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It's amazing how all the Chicken Little's come screaming out of the woodwork saying "The sky is falling, the sky is falling."
This is Norm's view.
It's Amazing How Ruthless These People Are... Nothing Phases Them....
Chain wrapped around 'old man's body' found in mosque
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- "There are the bloodstains on the wall, and here it is dried on the floor," Abu Muhanad said as he walked through a torture chamber in a Baghdad mosque where more than two dozen bodies have been found.
Chunks of hair waft lazily across the floor in the hot Baghdad breeze.
"This was the torture room," said Muhanad, the leader of a U.S.-backed armed group that now controls the mosque.
"This is what they used for hanging," he said, pointing to a cord dangling from the ceiling. "Here is a chain we found tied to an old man's body."
The horrific scene at this southwestern Baghdad mosque is what officials say was the work of a Shiite militia known as the Mehdi Army. Residents who live near the mosque say they could hear the victims' screams.
The militia had been in control of the mosque, called Adib al-Jumaili, from at least January 2007 until May of this year. Residents say coalition forces weren't in the region and the torture and killings went unchecked.
Some of the victims were accused of being spies for U.S. forces. Other family members don't know why their loved ones disappeared. The family members at the mosque who spoke to CNN were all Shiite, the same branch of Islam as the Mehdi militia. But, they say, some of the victims were Sunni as well.
The neighborhood lies in an area that became one of the capital's many sectarian fault lines. It's been about three months since the Mehdi Army, loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, abandoned this mosque as it withdrew from several strongholds across the country.
Spray painted on the walls is a chilling warning: "Spies, you will dig your own graves. Long live the Mehdi Army."
Now the mosque is under the watch of the Sons of Iraq, a local armed group that is largely financed by the Americans working alongside the Iraqi police. They are charged with trying to keep the peace in the neighborhood.
Only now are people able to understand the true magnitude of the Shiite militia's atrocities and the brutal laws they were enforcing on the people."This was my son's grave," Abu Wissam said, pointing to one of the many shallow holes in the mosque's garden. "We recovered his corpse completely rotten. His hands and legs were amputated, and his head was decapitated."
"He was just a college graduate," his mother sobbed, clutching her 25-year-old son's photo.They say the Mehdi Army abducted their son about a year ago, accusing him of being a traitor. They shot up and looted his home. The family fled.
A gruesome video of their son's mutilated body was delivered to their doorstep.
The militia "still raid our homes," Abu Wissam said. "Their families are in the district. The day before yesterday, at noon, they tried to assassinate me, but I was able to call the police for help."
The town is eerily deserted. Most of the residents fled the militia's reign; many who stayed bore the brunt of the violence. Homes stand abandoned, shops shuttered, buildings shot up.
A single car drives down the main street as a pack of dogs runs through the twisted piles of metal that was once an outdoor market.
Lingering at the mosque are a handful of residents whose loved ones were also abducted, looking for clues.
"They said they were just taking him for a few minutes, for an investigation," said Karima, who only wanted to be identified by her first name, as her eyes filled with tears. "But they never released him and we heard he might be buried behind the mosque."
Umm Diab's breath came in shallow gasps as tears flowed from her turquoise-green eyes. She wiped them away using the corner of her abaya, or robe. In her hand, there's a passport photo of her father, who was abducted by the militia.
"All we want are their dead bodies," she said.
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