SCIENCE NEWS
Human voice makes giant leap in space thanks to Curiosity
Words uttered by Charles Bolden, the administrator of NASA, were radioed to the Curiosity Rover on the surface of Mars, which in turn sent them back to NASA's Deep Space Network on Earth, NASA said in a statement Monday.
The successful transmission means Bolden's space-faring comments are the first instance of a recorded human voice traveling from Earth to another planet and back again, according to NASA.
In the recording, Bolden congratulated NASA employees and other agencies involved in the Curiosity mission, noting that "landing a rover on Mars is not easy."
The announcement by NASA of the voice transmission, the latest in a series of advances by Curiosity since it landed on Mars earlier this month, comes just days after the death of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.
"We hope these words will be an inspiration to someone alive today who will become the first to stand upon the surface of Mars," Dave Lavery, NASA Curiosity program executive, said in the agency's statement. "And like the great Neil Armstrong, they will speak aloud of that next giant leap in human exploration."
As well as the voice recording, NASA on Monday released new photos of the Martian landscape taken by Curiosity. The images show the knobbly terrain on the side of Mount Sharp, an area that Curiosity is eventually intended to explore.
Mount Sharp was formed from hundreds of rock layers that built up over time. The mountain is about 3 miles high, but the rover will trek up a small portion of it, testing different layers for signs that life could have once existed on Mars. It may take about a year for the rover to reach this target.
Curiosity already is sending back more data from the surface of Mars than the combined results of all of NASA's previous rovers, the space agency said Monday.
Last week, it completed its first drive on Mars, setting the stage for it to venture farther afield.
Despite the complexity of landing a 2,000-pound vehicle on another planet, Curiosity had a perfect landing on August 6, and most of the instruments scientists have tested appear to function.
There's only been one glitch so far: a wind sensor on the rover's weather station was damaged and the reason might always remain mysterious, scientists say.
Sugar found in space around young star
Washington: A team of astronomers has spotted sugar molecules in the gas surrounding a young Sun-like star, using the powerful telescope Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).
This is the first time sugar been found in space around such a star, and the discovery shows that the building blocks of life are in the right place, at the right time, to be included in planets forming around the star.
The astronomers found molecules of glycolaldehyde -- a simple form of sugar-- in the gas surrounding a young binary star, with similar mass to the Sun, called IRAS 16293-2422.
Glycolaldehyde has been seen in interstellar space before, but this is the first time it has been found so near to a Sun-like star, at distances comparable to the distance of Uranus from the Sun in the Solar System. This discovery shows that some of the chemical compounds needed for life existed in this system at the time of planet formation.
“In the disc of gas and dust surrounding this newly formed star, we found glycolaldehyde, which is a simple form of sugar, not much different to the sugar we put in coffee,” explained Jes Jorgensen (Niels Bohr Institute, Denmark), the lead author of the paper.
“This molecule is one of the ingredients in the formation of RNA, which -- like DNA, to which it is related -- is one of the building blocks of life,” Jorgensen said.
The high sensitivity of ALMA -- even at the technically challenging shortest wavelengths at which it operates -- was critical for these observations, which were made with a partial array of antennas during the observatory’s Science Verification phase.
“What it is really exciting about our findings is that the ALMA observations reveal that the sugar molecules are falling in towards one of the stars of the system. The sugar molecules are not only in the right place to find their way onto a planet, but they are also going in the right direction,” said team member Cecile Favre (Aarhus University, Denmark).
“A big question is: how complex can these molecules become before they are incorporated into new planets? This could tell us something about how life might arise elsewhere, and ALMA observations are going to be vital to unravel this mystery,” concludes Jorgensen.
Curiosity rover reveals Mars crater looks like ‘Mojave Desert’
The ancient Martian crater, where the Curiosity rover landed, looks strikingly similar to the Mojave Desert in California with its looming mountains and hanging haze, scientists said.
“The first impression that you get is how Earth-like this seems looking at that landscape,” said Chief Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology.
Overnight, the car-size rover poked its head out for the first time since settling in Gale Crater, peered around and returned a flood of black-and-white pictures that will be stitched into a panorama.
It provided the best view so far of its destination since touching down Sunday night, after nailing an intricate choreography. During the last few seconds, a rocket-powered spacecraft hovered as cables lowered Curiosity to the ground.
In the latest photos, Curiosity looked out toward the northern horizon. Nearby were scour marks in the surface blasted by thrusters, which kicked up a swirl of dust. There were concerns that Curiosity got dusty, but scientists said that was not the case.
“We do see a thin coating of dust, but nothing too bad,” said Justin Maki, Imaging Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $2.5 billion mission.
Scientists were giddy about the scour marks because they exposed bedrock below information that should help scientists better understand the landing site.
Since landing, Curiosity has zipped home a stream of low-resolution pictures taken by tiny cameras under the chassis and a camera at the end of its robotic arm, which remained stowed. It also sent back a low-quality video glimpsing the last two-and-a-half minutes of its descent.
The rover successfully raised its mast packed with high-resolution and navigation cameras. With the mast up, it can begin its shutterbug days in force including taking a 360-degree coloured view of its surroundings as early as today.
John Grotzinger said that he was struck by the Martian landscape, which appeared diverse. There seemed to be harder material underneath the gravely surface, he said.
“It kind of makes you feel at home. We’re looking at a place that feels really comfortable,” he said.
He added that Mars, of course, is very different from Earth. It’s a frigid desert constantly bombarded by radiation. There are geological signs that it was a warmer and wetter place once upon a time. One of the mission’s goals is to figure out how Mars transformed.
Birds that live with varying weather sing more versatile songs
A new study of North American songbirds reveals that birds that live with fluctuating weather are more flexible singers. Mixing it up helps birds ensure that their songs are heard no matter what the habitat.
To test the idea, the researchers analyzed song recordings from more than 400 male birds spanning 44 species of North American songbirds -- a data set that included orioles, blackbirds, warblers, sparrows, cardinals, finches, chickadees and thrushes.
They used computer software to convert each sound recording -- a medley of whistles, warbles, cheeps, chirps, trills and twitters -- into a spectrogram, or sound graph. Like a musical score, the complex pattern of lines and streaks in a spectrogram enable scientists to see and visually analyze each snippet of sound.
For each bird in their data set, they measured song characteristics such as length, highest and lowest notes, number of notes, and the spacing between them.
When they combined this data with temperature and precipitation records and other information such as habitat and latitude, they found a surprising pattern -- males that experience more dramatic seasonal swings between wet and dry sing more variable songs.
Why might this be?
"Precipitation is closely related to how densely vegetated the habitat is," said co-author Iliana Medina of Australian National University. Changing vegetation means changing acoustic conditions.
"Sound transmits differently through different vegetation types," Francis explained. "Often when birds arrive at their breeding grounds in the spring, for example, there are hardly any leaves on the trees. Over the course of just a couple of weeks, the sound transmission changes drastically as the leaves come in."
"Birds that have more flexibility in their songs may be better able to cope with the different acoustic environments they experience throughout the year," Medina added.
Kidney Cancer Vaccine Successful in Clinical Trials
Researchers at the University of Tübingen and immatics biotechnologies GmbH -- a start-up by Tübingen scientists -- have published the results of two clinical studies using the kidney-cancer vaccine IMA901 in the latest edition of Nature Medicine.
IMA901 is used to treat patients with cancer of the kidneys. It is composed of ten synthetic tumor-associated peptides (TUMAPs), which activate the body's own killer T-cells against the tumor. Unlike chemotherapy, this process targets the body's immune responses and mobilizes them to attack the cancer. The studies show that this active immunization against cancer can be successful and extend the life of a patient for longer than even the latest chemotherapy techniques -- with far fewer side-effects.
The study shows that in kidney-cancer patients with documented T-cell reactions against two or more tumor-associated peptides, the immune reaction and clinical progress were clearly linked. That confirms the hypothesis that cancer treatments can be further developed by broadly activating the immune system against various target structures on the surface of the tumor. The article also describes the researchers' aims of identifying biomarkers which could help give a more accurate prediction of how long certain groups of patients may live after being treated with IMA901. An analysis of more than 300 potential biomarkers turned up a number of them which are currently being tested in a new phase-3 study by immatics for their ability to show an immune response and the extension of patient life after treatment with IMA901.
Science fiction comes to life in Italian lab
Once the preserve of science fiction, increasingly sophisticated robotic devices are vying for a place side by side with humans in the real world. At Italy's Sant'Anna university, a bionic arm commanded by the human brain or a limb extension that allows rescuers to lift rubble after earthquakes are just some of the futuristic innovations in the pipeline.
"The idea is to get robots out of factories where they have shown their worth and to transform them into household machines which can live together with humans," says Professor Paolo Dario, director of the college's bio-robotics department.
The dustcart looks like the famous R2-D2 from Star Wars with its laser scanner and location sensors. The idea is that it can work through phone bookings to come to your street at a fixed time to collect your waste. "We tested it for two months with 15 families living in one of the towns near here. Everything worked well but there are still some problems to sort out," said Pericle Salvini, a member of the team behind the project.
Engineer Marco Fontana further stated that "The idea is to use this type of instrument for emergency workers in disasters like an earthquake". This innovation is something that can be of much importance in the future if harnessed properly.
The GOD Particle
The universe always has been a mysterious topic for all humans. Every human in this universe tries to unlock the mystery which can conclude about his/her existence. On July 4th the CMS and the ATLAS experimental teams at the Large Hedron Collider announced the formal discovery of a 'God Particle' (previously known as Higgs Boson).
'God Particle' is the name given to the subatomic particle called Higgs Boson.The Boson is named in honor of the Kolkata born scientist’s (Indian physicist Prof. Satyendra Nath Bose) work in the 1920s with Albert Einstein in defining one of two basic classes of subatomic particles. The work describes how photons can be considered particles as well as waves. All particles that follow such behavior, including the Higgs Boson, are called bosons.Higgs Boson is theoretical, first posited in 1964 by six physicists including the Briton Peter Higgs. He was the first person who proposed the existence of Higgs Boson. Newcastle born professor Peter Higgs, who dreamed up the concept of the particle that now bears his name while walking in the Scottish High Lands, was present at the announcement and wiped a tear. Said Prof. Higgs, “I had no idea this would happen in my life time. We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature.” The particle ‘Higgs Boson‘ was the missing part of the ‘STANDARD MODEL’ of particle physics which deals with the 12 fundamental particles, including Higgs Boson. The fundamental particles deal with the basic building block of the universe and the Standard Model predicts that Higgs Boson is that particle, which would produce the effect of mass. In laymen’s terms, different subatomic particles are responsible for giving matter different properties. One of the most mysterious and important properties is mass. The Higgs Boson, or ‘God Particle’ is believed to be the particle which gives mass to the matter.
Large Hedron Collider is the world’s biggest and most powerful particle accelerator, a 27 km (17-mile) looped pipe that sits in a tunnel 100 meters underground on the Swiss/French border. Here, two beams of protons are fired in opposite directions around it before smashing into each other to create many millions of particle collisions every second in a recreation of the conditions a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, when the Higgs field is believed to have ‘switched on’. To claim a discovery, scientists have said that there is a probability of less than one in a million that their conclusions from the data harvested from the particle accelerator are the result of a statistical fluke.
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