Tag: Science & Technology

BHOPAL (TIP): After its successful Mangalyan mission, Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) is gearing up for four satellite launches this year. Among them, IRNSS-1D will be the first, which would put in place India’s own navigation system at par with Global Positioning System of the US. And Master control facility (MCF), Isro, Bhopal, will play a big role in round-the-clock tracking and management of the navigational satellites in coordination with MCF, Hassan, Karnataka. Director, public relations, Deviprasad Karnik, told TOI over phone, “The four IRNSS series satellites will be launched to complete the constellation of navigation satellite series.” “MCF, Bhopal is responsible for orbit rising of satellites, in-orbit payload testing, and on-orbit operations all through life of these satellites. MCF activities include round-theclock tracking, telemetry and commanding operations and special operations like eclipse management, station-keeping maneuvre and recovery actions in case of contingencies,” said Karnik. The master control facility interacts with user agencies for effective utilization of satellite payloads and to minimize the service disturbances during special operations. IRNSS-1D is the fourth in the series of seven satellites the national space agency is planning to launch to put in place the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System. While four satellites would be sufficient to start operations of the system, the remaining three would make it more accurate and efficient. “The GSAT-6 communication satellite will be launched using GSLV rocket and GSAT-15 will be launched from French Guiana, using Ariane rocket of Arianespace,” said Karnik adding in both the GSAT launches, MCF, Bhopal will track and monitor the operations. Earlier, in October 2014, when the third series of navigation satellite (IRNSS-1C) was positioned in a predetermined orbit, it was MCF, Bhopal, which got down to tracking the satellite.

TORONTO (TIP): A next-generation cheaper, lighter and more powerful rechargeable battery for electric vehicles is one step closer to reality.

The discovery of a material that maintains a rechargable sulphur cathode helps to overcome a primary hurdle to building a lithium-sulphur (Li-S) battery.

Such a battery can theoretically power an electric car three times further than current lithium-ion batteries for the same weight, at a much lower cost, researchers said.

“This is a major step forward and brings the lithium-sulphur battery one step closer to reality,” said chemistry professor Linda Nazar from the University of Waterloo.

In theory, sulphur can provide a competitive cathode material to lithium cobalt oxide in current lithium-ion cells. Sulphur as a battery material is extremely abundant, relatively light and very cheap. Unfortunately, the sulphur cathode exhausts itself after only a few cycles because the sulphur dissolves into the electrolyte solution as it is reduced by incoming electrons to form polysulphides. Nazar’s group originally thought that porous carbons or graphenes could stabilize the polysulphides by physically trapping them. But in an unexpected twist, they discovered metal oxides could be the key. The researchers found that nanosheets of manganese dioxide (MnO2) work even better than titanium oxides. “You have to focus on %the fundamental understanding of the phenomenon before you can develop new, advanced materials,” said Nazar.

WASHINGTON (TIP): Nasa has collaborated with four US companies to develop intra-vehicular activity space suits and new launch vehicle capabilities among other advances in space exploration. The partnerships build on the success of Nasa’s commercial spaceflight initiatives to leverage Nasa experience and expertise into new capabilities. The Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities (CCSC) initiative is designed to advance private sector development of integrated space capabilities through access to Nasa’s spaceflight resources and ensure emerging products or services are commercially available to government and customers within approximately the next five years. ATK Space Systems, in Beltsville, Maryland, is developing space logistics, hosted payload and other space transportation capabilities, Nasa said. Final Frontier Design, in Brooklyn, New York, is developing intra-vehicular activity space suits. According to Nasa, Space Exploration Technologies, in Hawthorne, California, is developing space transportation capabilities that could be used to support missions into deep space. United Launch Alliance, in Centennial, Colorado, is developing new launch vehicle capabilities to reduce cost and enhance performance. “Companies in all shapes and sizes are investing their own capital toward innovative commercial space capabilities,” said Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at Nasa Headquarters in Washington. “These awards demonstrate the diversity and maturity of the commercial space industry. We look forward to working with these partners to advance space capabilities and make them available to Nasa and other customers in the coming years,” said McAlister. The Space Act Agreements (SAAs) have no exchange of funds, and each party bears the cost of its participation. Nasa’s contributions could include technical expertise, assessments, lessons learned, technologies and data.

LONDON (TIP): Your smartphone touchscreen can actually change the way your thumb and brain work together, a new study has found. More touchscreen use in the recent past translates directly into greater brain activity when the thumbs and other fingertips are touched, researchers found. “I was really surprised by the scale of the changes introduced by the use of smartphones,” said Arko Ghosh of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich in Switzerland. “I was also struck by how much of the interindividual variations in the fingertip-associated brain signals could be simply explained by evaluating the smartphone logs,” Ghosh said. Ghosh and his colleagues realised that smartphones could be a grand opportunity to explore the everyday plasticity of the human brain. Not only are people suddenly using their fingertips, and especially their thumbs, in a new way, but many of us are also doing it a lot, day after day, researchers said. The phones are also keeping track of our digital histories to provide a readymade source of data on those behaviours. To link digital footprints to brain activity in the new study, Ghosh and his team used electroencephalography (EEG) to record the brain response to mechanical touch on the thumb, index, and middle fingertips of touchscreen phone users in comparison to people who still haven’t given up their old-school mobile phones. The researchers found that the electrical activity in the brains of smartphone users was enhanced when all three fingertips were touched. In fact, the amount of activity in the cortex of the brain associated with the thumb and index fingertips was directly proportional to the intensity of phone use. The thumb tip was even sensitive to day-to-day fluctuations: the shorter the time elapsed from an episode of intense phone use, the researchers said, the larger was the cortical potential associated with it. The results suggest that repetitive movements over the smooth touchscreen surface reshape sensory processing from the hand, with daily updates in the brain’s representation of the fingertips, researchers said. “We propose that cortical sensory processing in the contemporary brain is continuously shaped by personal digital technology,” Ghosh and his colleagues said.

SRIHARIKOTA (TIP): This rocket didn’t put a satellite in orbit. In fact, its payload plunged into the Bay of Bengal 20 minutes after the vehicle lifted off from Sriharikota. And that made it a success, for it was the first step to India’s manned space mission.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) achieved success of a different kind on December 18 when its GSLV Mark III on a suborbital experimental flight carried an unmanned crew module which was ejected at a height of 126km. Re-entering the atmosphere, its parachutes ensured a soft-thud on the sea. Recovered by the Indian Coast Guard, the Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment (CARE) will undergo tests to ascertain its efficiency in bringing back future astronauts from India.

“Everything went as per plan,” said ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan. “After a decade of developing the GSLV Mk II, we have tasted the first success of an experimental flight. The performances of the solid and liquid stages were as expected. The unmanned crew module worked extremely well.”

GSLV Mark III, weighing 630.5 tonnes – the heaviest rocket to be made by ISRO – lifted off from the second launch pad of Satish Dhawan Space Centre at 9.30am. Designed not to take the payload to a higher orbit, the rocket had a dummy cryogenic engine. The rocket went through the stage separations as planned and, 20 minutes later, ejected the crew module at an altitude of 126 km at a velocity of 5.3km per sec. The module re-entered the atmosphere at 80km and plunged into the Bay of Bengal, about 180km from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

For once, there was something more exciting than the launch—the recovery of the payload. CARE was fitted with a system that eludes a chemical that turns the sea water at the point of impact a fluorescent green. This was for the overflying Dornier aircraft to spot it even if its beacon and GPS tracker failed. But the signals were loud and clear as the Indian Coast Guard vessel Samudra Paheradar made a deft approach.

A 17-member team from ISRO on board the vessel recovered CARE at 4.30pm. S Somnath, project director, GSLV Mark III, said the module looked intact, signifying that it had withstood the high friction and temperature during the re-entry into the atmosphere. The crew module, which is expected to reach the Chennai port on December 21, will be further developed to send India’s first men in space, some ten years later.

Before that, ISRO will test the emergency ejection (crew safety mechanism) system in 2015. “We plan to have the (full-fledged) development launch of GSLV Mark III after two years,” said Radhakrishnan.

Scientists said the biggest challenge of the project was avoiding the separated parts of the rocket colliding with the crew module during re-entry. The cryogenic stage of the launch vehicle was not activated as its indigenous C 25 cryo engine is still in early ground test phase.

The United States department of defence has successfully tested a bullet that can change direction after it has been fired, apparently using fins built into the shell to direct it in the air and account for wind and targets moving.

The Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance weapon, known as Exacto, is made by American industrial company Teledyne Technologies. The firm is making the bullet for the American government’s military research agency, Darpa.

A video made by the company shows the bullet being fired twice, deliberately off target. The second time it swings back in towards the target and hits. The companies involve have not disclosed how the bullet works, but it is thought to have small fins that redirect its path. The sniper shines a laser at the target, which the bullet then follows as it moves through the air. That stops the complicated adjustments that snipers have to make for wind, weather, the dip of the bullet as it flies through the air and any movement by the target, and could mean that snipers’ targets could be hit from much further away. The record kill by a sniper rifle stands at 8,120 feet. That was done by UK soldier Craig Harrison in 2010, during the war in Afghanistan.

LONDON: In a big boost to the global fight against the deadly Ebola virus, scientists have found 53 existing drugs that may keep the Ebola virus from entering human cells, a key step in the process of infection.

Among the better known drug types shown to hinder infection by an Ebola virus model include several cancer drugs, antihistamines and antibiotics.

Among the most effective at keeping the virus out of human cells were found to be microtubule inhibitors used to treat cancer, according to researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The next step is to test the re-purposed drug candidates in animal studies to see if useful doses against the virus come with toxic side effects.

If any of prove to be safe and effective, the government may opt to deploy them in the outbreak areas.

At present, there is no approved treatment for Ebola virus infection and the estimated mortality rate of the current Ebola outbreak is nearly 70%.

Antibody-based therapy (ZMapp) has proven effective in animal studies and has been used for the treatment of a few patients but has not been confirmed in clinical trials.

It is also expensive to make and in short supply.

Ebola vaccine trials are getting underway as well, but vaccines will not be available for some time.

“In light of the historic and devastating outbreak of Ebola virus disease, there is an urgent need to rapidly develop useful treatments against Ebola infection and our study results argue that repurposing existing drugs may be among the fastest ways to achieve this,” said lead author Adolfo Garcia-Sastre from Icahn School of Medicine.

“Any of the compounds identified in this study promise to become lead compounds in near-future drug development efforts studies targeting this virus,” he added.

What the team has done is sift through sample libraries of 2,816 compounds already approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for other uses. They used a miniaturized, high-speed technology to screen through.

Their assay was designed to identify compounds that blocked the ability of the Ebola virus to enter and infect human cells by at least 50%.

While fully intact Ebola virus is a biosafety level (BSL) 4 pathogen and dangerous to work with, the team created a virus-like particle comprised of the Ebola proteins
(glycoproteins and matrix proteins) that enable the virus to enter cells, but without many of the genes and proteins that make the virus deadly.

LONDON (TIP): Nasa has announced that the Mars Curiosity rover has detected methane on the red planet. Whether the Martian atmosphere contains traces of the gas has been a question of high interest for years because methane is a potential sign of life.

The team responsible for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on the Curiosity rover announced it has made the first definitive detection of organic molecules at Mars. This comes a year after the Curiosity rover team announced that it had found no evidence of methane on the Red Planet. The surface of Mars is currently inhospitable to life but there is evidence that the Red Planet once had a climate that could have supported life billions of years ago. For example, features resembling dry riverbeds and minerals that only form in the presence of liquid water have been discovered on the Martian surface. The organic molecules found by the team were in a drilled sample of the Sheep bed mudstone in Gale crater, the landing site for the Curiosity. Scientists think the crater was once the site of a lake billions of years ago and rocks like mud stone formed from sediment in the lake.

The mud stone was also found to contain 20% smectite clays. On Earth such clays are known to provide high surface area and optimal interlayer sites for the concentration and preservation of organic compounds when rapidly deposited under reducing chemical conditions.

The discovery shows that the ancient environment offered a supply of reduced organic molecules for use as building blocks for life and an energy source for life.

“We think life began on Earth around 3.8 billion years ago, and our result shows that places on Mars had the same conditions at that time -liquid water, a warm environment and organic matter,” said Caroline Freissinet of Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre.

“So if life emerged on Earth in these conditions, why not on Mars as well,” Freissinet added.

NEW DELHI (TIP): First results of studies done by the comet-chaser spacecraft Rosetta of its target comet have dealt a blow to the popular theory that water was brought to Earth by comets. Data from the ROSINA instrument aboard the European Space Agency’s spacecraft that had a spectacular rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko last month shows that the composition of its water vapor is significantly different from that found on Earth. When the Earth formed some 4.6 billion years ago, it was so hot that all the water on it would have vaporized. Yet today, two-thirds of the surface of Earth is covered by water.

Researchers agree that it must have been delivered to Earth by small bodies at a later stage of the planet’s evolution. It is, however, not clear which family of small bodies is responsible. There are three possibilities: asteroid-like small bodies from the region of Jupiter; Oort cloud comets formed inside of Neptune’s orbit; and Kuiper Belt comets formed outside of Neptune’s orbit. The key to determining where the water originated is in its isotopic “flavor.” That is, by measuring the level of deuterium – a heavier form of hydrogen.

By comparing the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in different objects, scientists can identify where in the solar system that object originated. And by comparing the D/H ratio, in Earth’s oceans with that in other bodies, scientists can aim to identify the origin of our water. The ROSINA instrument on Rosetta has found that the value for the D/H ratio on the comet is more than three times the terrestrial value. This is among the highest-ever-measured values in the solar system.

That means it is very unlikely that comets like 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko are responsible for the terrestrial water. “We knew that Rosetta’s in situ analysis of this comet was always going to throw us surprises,” said Matt Taylor, Rosetta’s project scientist from the European Space Research and Technology Center, Noordwijk, the Netherlands. “The bigger picture of solar-system science, and this outstanding observation, certainly fuel the debate as to where Earth got its water.” In 1986, the European Giotto mission to comet Halley had found the D/H ratio in a comet for the first time.

It turned out to be twice the terrestrial ratio. The conclusion at that time was that Oort cloud comets, of which Halley is a member, cannot be the responsible reservoir for our water. Several other Oort cloud comets were measured in the next 20 years, all displaying very similar D/H values compared to Halley. Subsequently, models that had comets as the origin of the terrestrial water became less popular. This changed when, thanks to the European Space Agency’s Herschel spacecraft, the D/H ratio was determined in comet Hartley 2, which is believed to be a Kuiper Belt comet. The D/H ratio found was very close to our terrestrial value — which was not really expected.

Most models on the early solar system claim that Kuiper Belt comets should have an even higher D/H ratio than Oort cloud comets because Kuiper Belt objects formed in a colder region than Oort cloud comets. The new findings of the Rosetta mission make it more likely that Earth got its water from asteroid-like bodies closer to our orbit and/or that Earth could actually preserve at least some of its original water in minerals and at the poles. “Our finding also disqualifies the idea that Jupiter family comets contain solely Earth ocean-like water,” said Kathrin Altwegg, principal investigator for the ROSINA instrument from the University of Bern, Switzerland, and lead author of the Science paper. “It supports models that include asteroids as the main delivery mechanism for Earth’s oceans.”

LONDON (TIP): Scientists have made a significant start towards creating an obesity pill. A team of researchers from Imperial College London have discovered the exact brain mechanism that drives our appetite for foods rich in glucose and could lead to treatments for obesity. Glucose is a component of carbohydrates, and the main energy source used by brain cells.

By studying rats, the team identified a mechanism that appears to sense how much glucose is reaching the brain, and prompts animals to seek more if it detects a shortfall. The researchers believe it may play a role in driving our preference for sweet and starchy foods. Dr James Gardiner from Imperial’s department of medicine who led the study, said: “Our brains rely heavily on glucose for energy. It’s clearly a very important nutrient, but in our evolutionary past it would have been hard to come by.

So we have a deeprooted preference for glucose-rich foods and seek them out.” The researchers hypothesised that an enzyme called glucokinase might play a role in driving our desire for glucose. Glucokinase is involved in sensing glucose in the liver and pancreas. It is present in the hypothalamus, an area of the brain that regulates a variety of essential functions including food intake, but its exact role was unclear. “This is the first time anyone has discovered a system in the brain that responds to a specific nutrient, rather than energy intake in general.

It suggests that when you’re thinking about diet, you have to think about different nutrients, not just count calories,” Dr Gardiner said. Dr Gardiner suggested that in humans it might be possible to reduce cravings for glucose by altering one’s diet and a drug acting on this system could potentially prevent obesity.

WASHINGTON (TIP): Even as astronomers search for extraterrestrial life in planets that look a lot like Earth because of presence of oxygen, some such planets may not be habitable because of intense heat during their formative years, says a study. Some planets close to lowmass stars – prime targets in the search for extraterrestrial life – likely had their water and atmospheres burned away when they were still forming, the researchers found through computer simulations.

Low-mass stars, also called M dwarfs, are smaller than the sun, and also much less luminous, so their habitable zone tends to be fairly close in. “All stars form in the collapse of a giant cloud of interstellar gas, which releases energy in the form of light as it shrinks,” said Rodrigo Luger from University of Washington. “But because of their lower masses, and therefore lower gravities, M dwarfs take longer to fully collapse – on the order of many hundreds of millions of years,” Luger explained. Planets around these stars can form within 10 million years, so they are around when the stars are still extremely bright. “And that is not good for habitability, since these planets are going to initially be very hot, with surface temperatures in excess of a thousand degrees.

When this happens, your oceans boil and your entire atmosphere becomes steam,” Luger added. The researchers noted that M dwarf stars emit a lot of Xray and ultraviolet light, which heats the upper atmosphere to thousands of degrees. A side effect of this process could lead to huge oxygen build-up in the planets. “Because of the oxygen they build up, they could look a lot like Earth from afar – but if you look more closely you will find that they are really a mirage; there is just no water there,” Luger added.

CAPE CANAVERAL (TIP): Wind gusts and sticky fuel valves conspired to keep Nasa’s new Orion spacecraft on the launch pad on December 5, delaying a crucial test flight meant to revitalize human exploration. The space agency’s new countdown clock got a workout as problem after problem cropped up in the final four minutes, and the count switched back and forth. A stray boat in the launch-danger zone kicked things off badly.

Then excessive wind twice halted the countdown, followed by valve trouble on the unmanned Delta IV rocket that could not be fixed in time. Declining battery power in the rocket’s video camera system reinforced the decision to quit for the day. Orion is how Nasa hopes to one day send astronauts to Mars. This inaugural flight, while just 4 hours, will send the unmanned capsule 3,600 miles (5,800 kilometres) into space. It’s the first attempt to send a spacecraft capable of carrying humans beyond a couple hundred miles of Earth since the Apollo moon program.

The ultimate goal, in the decades ahead, is to use Orion to carry people to Mars and back. Nasa anticipated 26,000 guests for the historic send-off — the roads leading into Kennedy Space Center were packed well before dawn — and the atmosphere was reminiscent of the shuttle-flying days. “Go Orion!!” urged a hotel billboard in nearby Cocoa Beach. The launch would have been special for another reason: Nasa launch commentator Mike Curie noted that it was the 16th anniversary of the launch of the first US piece of the International Space Station, by shuttle Endeavour.

“That was the beginning of the space station, and today is the dawn of Orion,” he said. Orion is aiming for two orbits on this inaugural run. On the second lap around the home planet, the spacecraft should reach a peak altitude of 3,600 miles, high enough to ensure a re-entry speed of 20,000mph (32,200kmph)and an environment of 4,000 degrees (2,200 celsius). Splashdown will be in the Pacific off the Mexican Baja coast, where Navy ships already are waiting. Nasa’s Mission Control in Houston was all set to oversee the entire 4{- hour operation once the rocket was in flight.

The flight program was loaded into Orion’s computers well in advance, allowing the spacecraft to fly essentially on autopilot. Flight controllers could intervene in the event of an emergency breakdown. The spacecraft is rigged with 1,200 sensors to gauge everything from heat to vibration to radiation. At 11 feet (3.4 meters) tall with a 16.5-foot (5-meter) base, Orion is bigger than the old-time Apollo capsules and, obviously, more advanced. As Nasa’s program manager Mark Geyer noted, “The inside of the capsule is totally different.”

LONDON (TIP): Scientists have confirmed that eating late at night causes weight gain suggesting that restricting eating hours could help fight high cholesterol, diabetes and obesity. Confining meals to a 12 hour window, such as 8am to 8pm, and fasting for the remaining day, appears to make a huge difference to whether fat is stored, or burned up by the body.

A new study by researchers at the Salk Institute cautions against an extended period of snacking, suggesting instead that confining caloric consumption to an 8 to 12 hour period — as people did just a century ago-might stave off high cholesterol, diabetes and obesity. The results add to mounting evidence suggesting that it’s not just what we eat but when we eat it that matters to our health. Although the intervention has not yet been tested in humans, it has already gained visibility as a potential weight loss method – and, in mice, it may reveal what causes obesity and related conditions in the first place.

In 2012, Satchidananda Panda, a Salk associate professor, showed that mice which were fed a high-fat diet, but allowed access to that diet for only eight hours per day, were healthier and slimmer than mice given access to the same food for the whole day, even though the two groups consumed the same number of calories. The new study shows the benefits of time restriction is surprisingly more profound than initially thought and can reverse obesity and diabetes in animal models.

Panda says, “These days, with the abundance of artificial light, TV, tablets and smartphones, adults and children alike are burning the midnight oil. What they are not burning is calories: with later bedtimes comes the tendency to eat.” The authors demonstrated that time restriction better synchronizes the function of hundreds of genes and gene products in our body with the predictable time of eating. Panda and his researchers, who study the body’s 24-hour rhythms, wanted to know how forgiving time-restricted feeding was.

In the new study, Panda’s group subjected nearly 400 mice, ranging from normal to obese, to various types of diets and lengths of time restrictions. They found that the benefits of time-restricted feeding showed up regardless of the weight of the mouse, type of diet and length of the time restriction (to some degree). Regardless of whether their diets were high in fat, fat and sucrose or just fructose, mice that were given time restrictions of 9 to 12 hours-and consumed the same amount of daily calories as their unrestricted counterpartsgained less weight than the controls, researchers found.

In particular, variations in the time window in which the mice were allowed to eat a highfat diet-including 9-, 10- and 12-hour periods-all resulted in similarly lean mice. For a 15-hour group, the benefits conferred by time restriction became more modest. Researchers gave some of the time-restricted mice a respite on weekends, allowing them free access to high-fat meals for these two days.

These mice had less fat mass and gained less weight than the mice given a freely available, high-fat diet the whole time. In fact, the mice that were freely fed just on weekends looked much the same as mice given access to food 9 or 12 hours a day for seven days a week, suggesting that the diet can withstand some temporary interruptions. “The fact that it worked no matter what the diet, and the fact that it worked over the weekend and weekdays, was a very nice surprise,” says the study’s first author Amandine Chaix, a postdoctoral researcher in Panda’s lab. More importantly, for the mice that had already become obese by eating a freely available high-fat diet, researchers restricted their food access to a nine-hour window.

Although the mice continued to consume the same number of calories, they dropped body weight by five percent within a few days. Importantly, eating this way prevented the mice from further weight gain (by about 25 percent by the end of the 38-week study) compared to the group kept on the freely available high-fat diet. The group also compared mice given a more balanced diet, showing that the timerestricted mice had more lean muscle mass than their unfettered littermates. It’s an interesting observation that although the mice on a normal diet did not lose weight, they changed their body composition,” Panda says. “That brings up the question—what happens? Are these mice maintaining their muscle mass which might have been lost with free feeding, or are they gaining muscle mass?”

LONDON (TIP): Your car may soon run on sawdust. Researchers have successfully converted sawdust into building blocks for petrol. Scientists at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium used a new chemical process to convert the cellulose in sawdust into hydrocarbon chains. These hydrocarbons can be used as an additive in gasoline, or as a component in plastics, researchers said. Cellulose is the main substance in plant matter and is present in all non-edible plant parts of wood, straw, grass, cotton and old paper. “At the molecular level, cellulose contains strong carbon chains.

We sought to conserve these chains, but drop the oxygen bonded to them, which is undesirable in high-grade gasoline,” said Professor Bert Sels. The new method to derive these hydrocarbon chains from cellulose was developed by researcher Beau Op de Beeck. “This is a new type of bio-refining, and we currently have a patent pending for it. We have also built a chemical reactor in our lab: we feed sawdust collected from a sawmill into the reactor and add a catalyst – a substance that sets off and speeds the chemical reaction,” said Dr Bert Lagrain. “With the right temperature and pressure, it takes about half a day to convert the cellulose in the wood shavings into saturated hydrocarbon chains, or alkanes,” Lagrain said. “Essentially, the method allows us to make a ‘petrochemical’ product using biomass – thus bridging the worlds of bioeconomics and petro chemistry,” he added.

The result is an intermediary product that requires one last simple step to become fully-distilled gasoline, said Sels. “Our product offers an intermediate solution for as long as our automobiles run on liquid gasoline. It can be used as a green additive – a replacement for a portion of traditionallyrefined gasoline,” Sels said.

WASHINGTON (TIP): The world’s first zero-gravity 3D printer on the International Space Station (ISS) has created the first object made using additive manufacturing, paving the way for future long-term space expeditions. “This first print is the initial step towards providing an on-demand machine shop capability away from Earth,” said Niki Werkheiser, project manager for the ISS 3D printer at Nasa’s Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama.

“The space station is the only laboratory where we can fully test this technology in space,” said Werkheiser. Nasa astronaut Barry Wilmore, Expedition 42 commander aboard the ISS, installed the printer on November 17 and conducted the first calibration test print. Based on the test print results, the ground control team sent commands to realign the printer and printed a second calibration test on November 20. These tests verified that the printer was ready for manufacturing operations.

On November 24, ground controllers sent the printer the command to make the first printed part: a faceplate of the extruder’s casing. This demonstrated that the printer can make replacement parts for itself, Nasa said. The 3-D printer uses a process formally known as additive manufacturing to heat a relatively low-temperature plastic filament and extrude it one layer at a time to build the part defined in the design file sent to the machine. Wilmore then removed it from the printer and inspected it. Part adhesion on the tray was stronger than anticipated, which could mean layer bonding is different in microgravity, a question the team will investigate as future parts are printed.

Wilmore installed a new print tray, and the ground team sent a command to fine-tune the printer alignment and printed a third calibration coupon. When Wilmore removes the calibration coupon, the ground team will be able to command the printer to make a second object. The results from this first print are contributing to a better understanding about the parameters to use when 3-D printing on the space station.

“This is the first time we’ve ever used a 3-D printer in space, and we are learning, even from these initial operations,” Werkheiser said. “As we print more parts we’ll be able to learn whether some of the effects we are seeing are caused by microgravity or just part of the normal fine-tuning process for printing. When we get the parts back on Earth, we’ll be able to do a more detailed analysis to find out how they compare to parts printed on Earth,” said Werkheiser

LOS ANGELES (TIP): Scientists, including two of Indian-origin, have developed new synthetic platelets that mimic and outperform natural platelets at controlling bleeding. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara turned to the human body’s own mechanisms for inspiration in dealing with the necessary and complicated process of coagulation. By creating nanoparticles that mimic the shape, flexibility and surface biology of the body’s own platelets, they were able to accelerate healing processes while opening the door to therapies and treatments that can be customised to specific patient needs.

“This is a significant milestone in the development of synthetic platelets, as well as in targeted drug delivery,” said Samir Mitragotri, director UC Santa Barbara’s Centre for Bioengineering. The plateletlike nanoparticles (PLNs) behave just like their human counterparts and can be added to the blood flow to supply or augment the patient’s own natural platelet supply, stemming the flow of blood and initiating the healing process, while allowing physicians and other caregivers to begin or continue the necessary treatment. Emergency situations can be brought under control faster, injuries can heal more quickly and patients can recover with fewer complications, researchers said.

“We were actually able to render a 65 per cent decrease in bleeding time compared to no treatment,” said graduate student researcher Aaron Anselmo, lead author of the paper. According to Mitragotri and colleagues Stefano Menegatti and Sunny Kumar, the key lies in the PLNs’ mimicry of the real thing. By imitating the shape and flexibility of natural platelets, PLNs can also flow to the injury site and congregate there. With surfaces functionalised with the same biochemical motifs found in their human counterparts, these PLNs also can summon other platelets to the site and bind to them, increasing the chances of forming that essential plug.

The platelets are engineered to dissolve into the blood after their usefulness has run out, minimising complications that can arise from emergency hemostatic procedures. According to Anselmo’s investigations, for the same surface properties and shape, nanoscale particles can perform even better than micron-size platelets. This technology allows for customisation of the particles with other therapeutic substances – medications, therapies and such – that patients with specific conditions might need. “This technology could address a plethora of clinical challenges,” said Dr Scott Hammond, director of UCSB’s Translational Medicine Research Laboratories. With optimisable PLNs, physicians would be able to strike a fine balance between anticoagulant therapy and wound healing in older patients, by using nanoparticles that can target where clots are forming without triggering unwanted bleeding.

NEW YORK (TIP): Scientists have long argued about the existence of a form of diamond called lonsdaleite associated with impacts by meteorites and asteroids. A team of scientists largely from Arizona State University (ASU) now show that what has been called lonsdaleite is in fact a structurally disordered form of ordinary diamond. “So-called lonsdaleite is actually the long-familiar cubic form of diamond but it is full of defects. These can occur due to shock metamorphism, plastic deformation or unequilibrated crystal growth,” explained Piter Nemeth, a former ASU visiting researcher.

The lonsdaleite story began almost 50 years ago. Scientists reported that a large meteorite called Canyon Diablo, after the crater it formed on impact in northern Arizona, contained a new form of diamond with a hexagonal structure. They described it as an impact-related mineral and called it lonsdaleite – after Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, a famous crystallographer. Since then, lonsdaleite has been widely used by scientists as an indicator of ancient asteroidal impacts on Earth, including those linked to mass extinctions. The scientists re-examined Canyon Diablo diamonds. Using the advanced electron microscopes, the team discovered, both in the Canyon Diablo and the synthetic samples, new types of diamond twins and nanometer-scale structural complexity.

LONDON (TIP): Gravity may have saved the universe from collapsing immediately after the Big Bang by providing stability needed to survive expansion during that period, a new study suggests. Studies of the Higgs particle – discovered at CERN in 2012 and responsible for giving mass to all particles – have suggested that the production of Higgs particles during the accelerating expansion of the very early universe (inflation) should have led to instability and collapse.

Scientists have been trying to find out why this did not happen, leading to theories that there must be some new physics that will help explain the origins of the universe that has not yet been discovered. Physicists from Imperial College London, and the Universities of Copenhagen and Helsinki, described how the spacetime curvature – in effect, gravity – provided the stability needed for the universe to survive expansion in that early period. Researchers investigated the interaction between the Higgs particles and gravity, taking into account how it would vary with energy. They show that even a small interaction would have been enough to stabilise the universe against decay.

“The Standard Model of particle physics, which scientists use to explain elementary particles and their interactions, has so far not provided an answer to why the universe did not collapse following the Big Bang,” said Professor Arttu Rajantie, from the Department of Physics at Imperial College London. “Our research investigates the last unknown parameter in the Standard Model – the interaction between the Higgs particle and gravity. “This parameter cannot be measured in particle accelerator experiments, but it has a big effect on the Higgs instability during inflation.

Even a relatively small value is enough to explain the survival of the universe without any new physics!” Rajantie said. The team plan to continue their research using cosmological observations to look at this interaction in more detail and explain what effect it would have had on the development of the early universe.

ALondon man is to live the life of another person for 28 days, in an experiment that he hopes will give him insight into the nature of human existence but which experts have called potentially `extremely disturbing’. Mark Farid is set to recruit an `avatar’ or `other’, who will video his whole life for 28 days, and watch all of that video through an Oculus Rift, while people feed him all of the food that his participant eats. Farid hopes that the experiment will allow him some insight into the debate over whether it is nature or nurture that causes a person to be how they are, accord ing to Vice.

By living as somebody else, Farid hopes to see whether he will start thinking like them, too. The 28-day period was chosen because of a common (though debunked) idea that new habits take 21 days to form, according to the Verge. Earlier in 2014, Farid ran a 24- hour test-run of the project, called ‘ Alone Together’, at the Arebyte Gallery in London. As in that run-through, the only contact Farid will have is an hour’s consultation with a psychologist, who will watch him in silence, and the volunteers who will help feed him the food that his surrogate eats. The other participant’s life will be recorded through a secret camera mounted in his glasses. Participants won’t be able to tell anybody but their partner that they are taking part. Applications to be the ‘other’ open on November 28.

Farid requires that the participant is a male, and in a relationship and living with someone who also agrees to take part. He also asks that potential participants consider whether they are comfortable with someone filming and watching a month of their whole life, and with that footage being used in a documentary . The successful participant will be given time with a psychologist before the task, to ensure he is up for it, and after. The project will be funded through a Kickstarter that is set to launch soon. Professor Barbara Sahakian, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at Cambridge, said, “I am concerned how such a long project which involves voyeurism on the part of Mark and also on the part of the public in regard to Mark will affect his mental health.”

WASHINGTON (TIP): Nasa’s Pluto-bound probe New Horizons spacecraft comes out of hibernation for the last time next month in preparation for a six-month encounter, including a first-ever close flyby of the mysterious dwarf planet on July 14, 2015. Next month’s wake-up call was preprogrammed into New Horizons’ on-board computer in August, commanding it come out of hibernation Dec 6. Work on the Earth is well under way to prepare the spacecraft for a six-month encounter with Pluto that begins January next year, Nasa said in statement.

“New Horizons is healthy and cruising quietly through deep space – nearly three billion miles from home – but its rest is nearly over,” says Alice Bowman, New Horizons mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. “It is time for New Horizons to wake up, get to work, and start making history,” Bowman added. Since its launch in January 2006, New Horizons has spent 1,873 days in hibernation – about two-thirds of its flight time “spread over 18 separate hibernation periods from mid-2007 to late 2014 that ranged from 36 days to 202 days long”. In hibernation mode much of the spacecraft is unpowered; the onboard flight computer monitors system health and broadcasts a weekly beacon-status tone back to Earth. “The final hibernation wake up Dec 6 signifies the end of an historic cruise across the entirety of our planetary system,” added New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern from Southwest Research Institute.

MELBOURNE (TIP): In a breakthrough, researchers have developed a revolutionary new way to manufacture natural chemicals and used it to assemble a scarce anti-inflammatory drug with potential to treat cancer and malaria. The advance could lead to new and cheaper ways to produce rare drugs in large quantities. “We took small molecules and clipped them together like Lego,” said lead researcher professor Michael Sherburn, from the Australian National University (ANU).

“The building blocks are carefully designed in such a way that the first reaction generates a product perfectly primed for the second. It’s quite magical. This means you can efficiently build large and complex molecules,” said Sherburn. Medicines of this type have traditionally been made in a cumbersome way. Chemists take a related molecule and renovate it. This is a lengthy process, with unwanted structural features being ripped out and replaced. “This leads to a lot of waste,” Sherburn said. The group trialled their innovative new method by making pseudopterosin, a powerful antiinflammatory and analgesic drug, which is currently only available in tiny quantities extracted from fan coral found in the Bahamas.

The work began as blue-sky research, with the researchers trying to work out a way to make supposedly impossible molecules of crossconjugated hydrocarbons. Before trying the experiments the team ran simulations on the Raijin supercomputer, which indicated that their method had potential. “Ours is an empowering and enabling technique, allowing a smarter and faster way to make important substances,” said Dr Chris Newton, who did the research in the laboratory as a PhD student. “The pseudopterosin synthesis is the tip of the iceberg. We are well on the way to efficient syntheses of other important drugs. “There is a potential for industrial-scale manufacture, too, which will take the pressure off species which are being harvested for drugs,” Newton said.

The security guard of future is five feet tall, Wi-Fi-equipped and looks uncannily like a cross between a Dalek and EVE from Wall-E. This is the K5 Autonomous Data Machine, the first product from Californian start-up Knightscope designed to replace human guards everywhere from schools to offices. The K5 was first unveiled in 2014 but has now been deployed for the first time at the Microsoft campus in Silicon Valley. The K5 has been to be ‘shown around’ its environment by a human controller to build a basic map, but will then happily patrol on its own, reporting any anomalies back to base.

Each bot weighs about 136kg and is equipped with a whole array of sensors, measuring movement, sound, location temperature, carbon dioxide levels and barometric pressure. There’s no weapons on board however, and the K5 will merely sound an ear-splitting alarm and send for human back-up if it gets spooked. Speaking to MIT Technology Review, Knightscope co-founder Stacy Stephens said the K5 “takes away the monotonous and sometimes dangerous work, and leaves the strategic work to law enforcement or private security, depending on the application.” Stephens says Knightscope wants to start putting its robots in work from the beginning of next year (K5 bots are employed not bought) and the hourly ‘wage’ of $6.25 should be attractive to companies used to paying double that for security.

DARMSTADT, Germany (TIP): The signal broke a seven-hour wait of agonising intensity and sparked scenes of jubilation at the European Space Agency’s mission control in Darmstadt. The team in charge of the Rosetta mission achieved what at times seemed an impossible task by landing a robotic spacecraft on a comet for the first time in history.

The moment the tension broke came shortly after 1600 GMT when the Philae called home. “We are there. We are sitting on the surface. Philae is talking to us,” said a jubilant Stephan Ulamec, Philae lander manager at the DLR German space centre. “We are on the comet.” Andrea Accomazzo, the Rosetta flight operations director, added: “We cannot be happier than we are now.” But celebrations were tempered by the later discovery that the probe’s two harpoons had not fired to fasten the craft down in the ultra-low gravity. Scientists now think the probe may have bounced after first coming into contact with the surface.

Ulamec said: “Maybe today we didn’t just land once, we landed twice.” The safe, if precarious, touchdown of the lander gives scientists a unique chance to ride onboard a comet and study from the surface what happens as its activity ramps up as it gets closer to the sun. The first images beamed back from the lander’s descent revealed a dramatic landscape of pits and precipices, craters and boulders. However, there have been gaps in its radio link with the orbiting Rosetta mothership. The £1bn ($1.58bn) Rosetta mission aims to unlock the mysteries of comets, made from ancient material that predates the birth of the solar system. In the data Rosetta and Philae collect, researchers hope to learn more of how the solar system formed and how comets carried water and complex organics to the planets, preparing the stage for life on Earth.

Space agencies have sent probes to comets before, but not like this. In 1986, Nasa’s Ice mission flew through the tail of Halley’s comet. In 2005, the agency’s Deep Impact spacecraft fired a massive copper block at comet Temple 1. But none before now has landed. The feat marks a profound success for the European Space Agency (ESA), which launched the Rosetta spacecraft more than 10 years ago from its Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. Since blasting off in March 2004, Rosetta and its lander Philae have travelled more than 6bn kilometres to catch up with the comet, which orbits the sun at speeds up to 135,000km/h. “We are the first to do this, and that will stay forever,” said Jean Jacques Dordain, director general of the ESA. Matt Taylor, a Rosetta project scientist, who had selected an extremely colourful shirt for the event, revealed an impressive – and brave – tattoo of the lander on the comet’s surface.

A TIMELINE OF COMET PROBE’S 10-YEAR JOURNEY

March 2, 2004: Europe’s unmanned probe Rosetta takes off from Kourou, French Guiana, after a series of delays, including an abandoned January 2003 launch window because of a rocket problem.

February 25, 2007: Rosetta carries out a close flyby of Mars. European Space Agency’s mission control breaks out in applause after the end of 15 tense minutes of radio silence as the craft passes behind the Red Planet.

September 5, 2008: Probe successfully passes close to an asteroid 250 million miles from Earth. The spacecraft loses its radio signal for 90 minutes as planned during the flyby of the Steins asteroid, also known as Asteroid 2867.

July 10, 2010: Between Mars and Jupiter, Rosetta transmits its first pictures from the largest asteroid ever visited by a satellite after it flies by Lutetia as close as 1,900 miles (3,200 kilometers). It is the closest look to date at the Lutetia asteroid.

January 20, 2014: Waking after almost three years of hibernation, Rosetta sends its first signal back to Earth. Systems had been powered down in 2011 to conserve energy, leaving scientists in the dark for 31 months.

August 6, 2014: Rosetta swings alongside comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

November 12, 2014: The probe releases the Philae lander and it drops to the comet’s surface. Seven hours later, Philae touches down on the comet.