Critters Hitch Ride to Martian Moon, and Back: Discovery News

No one knows if there is life on Mars, but if all goes well with a Russian science mission later this year, there will be life on the Martian moon Phobos — for a short time anyway.

An assortment of critters and microbes are scheduled to make a round-trip journey to Phobos as passengers aboard a Russian spacecraft, scheduled to launch in October.

The mission, called Phobos-Grunt, aims to return samples of the Martian moon to Earth for analysis. It will be the first Russian-led mission to Mars since the loss of the Phobos 1 and Phobos 2 probes in 1988 and the botched launch of the Mars 96 spacecraft.

“I wish them luck,” said University of Colorado planetary scientist Larry Esposito, who was a science team member on two of the failed Russian missions. …

In addition to planetary sciences, two teams of researchers are interested in learning how living organisms fare during the three-year round-trip journey to Mars.

The Pasadena, Calif.-based Planetary Society is flying 10 different species in a small canister to test a theory that life could have been carried to Earth inside meteorites. The samples include tardigrades — also known as water bears — seeds and microscopic bacteria.

“The organisms are being sent in a dormant state, like spores,” program manager Bruce Betts told Discovery News.

via Critters Hitch Ride to Martian Moon, and Back: Discovery News.

This was amazing:

When it comes to surviving open exposure in space, a tiny invertebrate now stands out: tardigrades, also known as “water-bears.”

These small, segmented animals not only survived a 12-day orbital expedition, some members of the community felled by solar radiation actually recovered upon their return to Earth.

“How these animals were capable of reviving their body … remains a mystery,” said lead researcher Ingemar Jönsson, with Sweden’s Kristianstad University, who writes about the discovery in this week’s issue of Current Biology.

In what is apparently the first test of an animal’s ability to survive open exposure to space, tardigrades were packed aboard the European-funded Foton-M3 spacecraft launched by Russian in September 2007.

The tiny invertebrates, which range in size from about 0.1 to 1.5 mm, are more commonly found on mosses and lichens. Because their habitats often dry up, the creatures are extremely hardy and can survive prolonged periods of total dryness.

That seems to be just the beginning of their skills. Packed in ventilated chambers that were exposed to the vacuum of space, adults from two species of tardigrades were subjected to extreme heat, frigid cold, cosmic rays and deadly levels of solar ultraviolet radiation. They had no air, water or food.

Most of the 3,000 creatures not only survived, but they went on to reproduce once they came back to Earth. – discovery

Books Bound in Human Skin; Lampshade Myth?

On a daytrip to Providence during fly-out week, I stumbled across an unusual and startling artifact on display at Brown University’s John Hay Library – an anatomy book bound in human skin. While such specimens are unusual, they are not as rare as you might think. Many older libraries and rare book collectors, including several at Harvard and in the Boston area, have an almost-literal skeleton in the closet: anthropodermic bibliopegy, the technical term for books bound in human skin.

While it’s not clear how many extant books actually have been bound in human skin, many older libraries (such as the library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia which has four such books, including one with a visible tattoo) have such tomes in their collection, suggesting that anthropodermically bound books number somewhere in the hundreds. Many of these books were likely bound in the 18th or 19th centuries, though some may be centuries older, while a few may even be younger.

Human Skin Lampshade Myth?

To get to the bottom of this, I interviewed Ken Kipperman, a leading authority on Nazi use of human remains and Polish-American son of Jewish parents who fled the Holocaust. He is the subject of a 2004 documentary, Shadows of Silence, about his obsessive search for lost human remains from the Holocaust and his compulsive quest to uncover the truth about the notorious “human skin” lampshade shown in an army newsreel days after the liberation of Buchenwald. It turns out, Kipperman tells me, that the famous lampshade from the newsreel footage was not made out of human skin, though it was believed to be at the time, and no human skin lampshades have ever been verified, though he says it’s always possible that one or two were made in isolated incidents. …

Kipperman’s conclusions comport with those of a June 2004 issue of the online de-bunking column The Straight Dope, which determined, “While the Nazis kept many grisly mementos of their victims, including tattooed skin, the lampshade claim may be a myth.”The Straight Dope

via Books Bound in Human Skin; Lampshade Myth? – Opinion.

World faces last chance to avoid fatal warming: EU

The world faces a final opportunity to agree an adequate global response to climate change at a U.N.-led meeting in Copenhagen in December, the European Union’s environment chief said on Friday.

World leaders from about 190 countries meet in Copenhagen in December to try to agree a global framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol on fighting global warming, which expires in 2012.

“It is now 12 years since Kyoto was created. This makes Copenhagen the world’s last chance to stop climate change before it passes the point of no return,” European Union Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told a climate conference in Budapest on Friday.

“Having an agreement in Copenhagen is not only possible, it is imperative and we are going to have it,” Dimas said.

With greenhouse gas emissions rising faster than projected, Dimas said it was essential that big polluters such as the United States and emerging economies in the Far East and South America also sign up for an agreement. “President Obama’s commitment to re-engage the United States fully in combating climate change is an enormously encouraging sign that progress is possible. So are positive initiatives coming from China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies.”

Dimas said an agreement in Copenhagen should aim to limit global warming below the critical 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times, or less than 1.2 degrees above the current level, by at least halving global emissions by 2050 from 1990 levels.

“Developed countries will have to go further, with cuts of 80-95 percent in order to (enable) developing countries to lift themselves out of poverty,” he said.

via NewsDaily: World faces last chance to avoid fatal warming: EU.

Missing asteroids reveal planet-sized mystery

Missing asteroids in our solar system may be the handiwork of rampaging giant planets as they migrated to their current positions, according to a new computer simulation.

Scientists have known that planets such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune migrated during the first several million years of early existence. The new simulation showed that the giant planets would have disturbed many asteroids as they fled the scene, leaving behind “footprints” that match the real-life patterns in the main asteroid belt.

“It really showed evidence that the footprints of planet migration are visible today in asteroid distribution,” said David Minton, a planetary sciences researcher at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Patterns of planet migration

Previous evidence has suggested that the giant planets once formed a more compact huddle. But their gravitational interactions with the then-larger Kuiper Belt, an icy region beyond Neptune filled with comet-like bodies, ended up fueling a migration.

“Each time the planets tossed these Kuiper Belt objects around, they would move a little,” Minton told SPACE.com.

Jupiter ended up moving slightly closer to the sun, while the other giant planets moved farther apart from both the sun and each other. Minton and Renu Malhotra, another planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, wanted to examine possible aftereffects of that unstable period.

via Missing asteroids reveal planet-sized mystery – Space.com- msnbc.com.

Self-digestion As A Means Of Survival

In times of starvation, cells tighten their belts: they start to digest their own proteins and cellular organs. The process – known as autophagy – takes place in special organelles called autophagosomes.

It is a strategy that simple yeast cells have developed as a means of survival when times get tough, and in the course of evolution, it has become a kind of self-cleaning process. In mammalian cells, autophagosomes are also responsible for getting rid of misfolded proteins, damaged organelles or disease-causing bacteria.

If this process malfunctions, it can result in infectious diseases, as well as cancer, Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease. Biochemists at Frankfurt’s Goethe University, working together with scientists from the University of Tromsø in Norway, the Weizmann Institute in Israel and the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute in Japan have just come up with an explanation as to how autophagosomes know exactly which proteins and organelles they should degrade.

“Although autophagy has been known for more than 30 years, it is astonishing that no-one thought of looking for the receptors that make this process so selective” explains Prof. Ivan Dikic from the Institute of Biochemistry II and the Cluster of Excellence ‘Macromolecular Complexes’ in Frankfurt. He had a head start in this field, since over several years, he and his group have researched and now published their work on another self-cleaning process in the cell: the degradation of small proteins in the proteasome, which acts as a kind of molecular shredder.

via Self-digestion As A Means Of Survival.

NewsDaily: “Bodies” exhibition probed in Poland

Polish prosecutors are investigating whether a controversial exhibition displaying human cadavers amounts to desecration of the human body, a spokesman said Friday.

“Bodies… the exhibition,” which has toured a number of countries, consists of 13 corpses and around 250 body parts which have undergone a process known as “plastination” which preserves human tissue permanently using liquid silicone rubber.

“We are investigating this case to check whether the corpses were not desecrated and whether all procedures needed to mount such an exhibition in Poland were carried out,” a spokesman for the Warsaw prosecutors’ office, Mateusz Martyniuk, told Reuters.

The exhibition, which has also drawn criticism from some Polish politicians, is housed in a Warsaw shopping mall and is scheduled to run until mid-July. The organizers said they had met all legal requirements to bring it to Poland.

“The exhibition entered the European Union a few months ago and in line with all sanitary procedures, customs regulations and others,” said Agnieszka Rojewska from Media Metropolis, the public relations agency promoting the display in Poland.

She said more than 10,000 people had visited the exhibition since it opened a week ago. Its chief medical adviser is Roy Glover, professor emeritus of anatomy and cell biology at the University of Michigan.

Sanitary officials expressed concern. “Thirteen dead people appear out of the blue in the center of Warsaw. It provokes the deepest astonishment, amazement and suspicion,” said Deputy General Sanitary Inspector for Poland, Jan Orgelbrand.

He invoked the specter of the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz, located in southern Poland, where the remains of murdered Jews were used in the manufacture of various products.

“The human being is sacred… A ‘beautiful’ lamp made of human skin in Auschwitz is the riposte to the question of where the human being ends and where art begins,” he said.

Poland was home to one of the world’s largest Jewish communities before the Nazis slaughtered most of them during World War Two in camps such as Auschwitz, where some 1.5 million Jews from all over Europe were killed.

Comment among people viewing the exhibition was mixed.

“There are some critical opinions about this, but I don’t agree with them. That’s what we are like,” visitor Anna Jurek told Reuters.

Last year, the “Bodies” exhibition also stirred controversy in the United States. The promoter agreed to stop using remains of undocumented origin in the New York display after a probe by the state attorney general.

via NewsDaily: “Bodies” exhibition probed in Poland.

I was annoyed at having to look at the big posters everywhere when it was in the US.  What if you DON’T want to look at dead bodies?

Octopus sets off flood at aquarium

Staff at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium say the trickster who flooded their offices with sea water was armed. Eight-armed, to be exact.

They blame the soaking they discovered Tuesday morning on the aquarium’s resident two-spotted octopus, a tiny female known for being curious and gregarious with visitors. The octopus apparently tugged on a valve and that allowed hundreds of gallons of water to overflow its tank.

Aquarium spokeswoman Randi Parent says no sea life was harmed by the flood, but the brand new, ecologically designed floors might be damaged by the water.

via Octopus sets off flood at aquarium – Weird news- msnbc.com.

I’ve heard that an octopus is smarter than a dog. This person agrees:

A dog I gather learns by trial-and-error, punishment-and-reward, whereas an octopus can observe and analyze, can even understand what abstractly is necessary (e.g., the knob to that door must turn for the door to open) and to apply its own, nonanalogous organs to the task (e.g., you used your hand, I can use my arm). – alt85

New rocket aims for cheaper nudges in space – MIT News Office

Satellites orbiting the Earth must occasionally be nudged to stay on the correct path. MIT scientists are developing a new rocket that could make this and other spacecraft maneuvers much less costly, a consideration of growing importance as more private companies start working in space.

The new system, called the Mini-Helicon Plasma Thruster, is much smaller than other rockets of its kind and runs on gases that are much less expensive than conventional propellants. As a result, it could slash fuel consumption by 10 times that of conventional systems used for the same applications, says Oleg Batishchev, a principal research scientist in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and leader of the work.

… engineers have been developing alternative, non-chemical rockets. In these, an external source of electrical energy is used to accelerate the propellant that provides the thrust for moving a craft through space.

Such non-chemical rockets have been successfully used by NASA and the European Space Agency in missions including NASA’s Deep Space 1, which involved the flyby of a comet and asteroid.

But the field is still relatively new, and these advanced rockets are one focus of the MIT Space Propulsion Laboratory (SPL). “The Mini-Helicon is one exciting example of the sorts of thrusters one can devise using external electrical energy instead of the locked-in chemical energy,” says Manuel Martinez-Sanchez, director of the SPL and a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

The Mini-Helicon is the first rocket to run on nitrogen, the most abundant gas in our atmosphere.

It was conceived through work with former astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz ScD ’77 on a much larger, more powerful system developed by Chang-Diaz. Batishchev’s team did a theoretical analysis showing that the first of three parts of the larger rocket could potentially be used alone for different applications.

The idea “was that a rocket based on the first stage [of Chang-Diaz's system] could be small and simple, for more economical applications,” says Batishchev, who notes that the team’s prototype would fit in a large shoe box.

Since then, 12 MIT students have worked on the Mini-Helicon, resulting in one PhD and four master’s theses to date. Batishchev notes, however, that it could be years before the technology can be used commercially, in part due to certification policies through NASA and other agencies.

The Mini-Helicon has three general parts: a quartz tube wrapped by a coiled antenna, with magnets surrounding both. The gas of interest is pumped into the quartz tube, where radio frequency power transmitted to the gas from the antenna turns the gas into plasma, or electrically charged gas.

The magnets not only help produce the plasma, but also confine, guide and accelerate it through the system. “The plasma beam exhausted from the tube is what gives us the thrust to propel the rocket,” Batishchev says.

He noted that the exhaust velocity from the new rocket is some 10 times higher than the velocity from the average chemical rocket, so much less propellant is needed. …

Batishchev notes that last summer, for fun, his team built a plasma rocket based on a glass bottle (a stand-in for the quartz tube) and an aluminum can (the radio-frequency antenna), both of which previously held soft drinks. It worked. “This shows that this is a robust, simple design. So in principle, an even simpler design could be developed,” he says.

via New rocket aims for cheaper nudges in space – MIT News Office.

New Galaxy Formation Theory Proposed

Astrophysicists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have formulated a novel theory that takes issue with the prevailing view on the origin of galaxies. Their research, which was recently published in the journal Nature, concludes that the galaxies primarily formed as a result of intensive cosmic streams of cold gas (mostly hydrogen) and not as a result of galactic mergers. In fact, the scientists say that these mergers “had only limited influence on the cosmological makeup of the universe as we know it.” …

The scientists turned to computer simulations, which were carried out using one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, in hopes to accurately simulate how galaxies formed in the early universe. The resulting model suggests that galaxy formation is a direct result of a continuous flow of cold gas along a few narrow streams, not a by-product of mergers. “These gas streams follow the filaments of the ‘cosmic web’ that defines the large-scale structure of matter in the universe, filaments that feed the dark-matter halos in the first place. These cold gas streams penetrate through the dark-matter halo of each galaxy and the hot gas that fills it and reach the center, where they become a rotating disk. These disks, each subject to its own, local, gravitational forces, break into a few giant clumps in which the gas converts into stars very efficiently” – explained the researchers.

via New Galaxy Formation Theory Proposed.

Solar calendar secret revealed in Suffolk church

Every year thousands of revellers flock to watch dawn break on the summer and winter solstices at Stonehenge, which Druids believe is a temple to the alignment of the sun.

Although no-one knows the reason behind the prehistoric stone circle in Wiltshire, it is widely accepted its design was such that it would mark the longest and shortest days of the year.

Now a mysterious spectacle which appears to honour the two other most significant days in the solar calendar has been discovered in a Suffolk church. This year’s spring equinox – when the day and night are of equal length – will shed light on a religious statue and with it an extraordinary secret that remained hidden for hundreds of years.

Weather permitting, for just four minutes on March 20 a beam of evening sunlight will filter through a small window at Barsham Church, near Beccles, and bathe a sculpture of Christ on the Cross in a golden light.

It is a phenomenon that was only recently rediscovered by a vicar after being hidden for centuries because the sculpture, also known as the rood, was taken down. It may date back as far as the 1300s when the window was built.

The Rev John Buchanan discovered it in the early 1990s, but has only recently been able to make sense of it after recording its occurrence over a number of years.

This year he predicts that the entire rood will be directly lit on March 20, while the preceding day and the following day will see the figure partially lit. The phenomenon is repeated at the autumn equinox in September.

“To actually see it was a matter of luck,” said Mr Buchanan. “You have to go in there at the right time and there’s got to be no cloud. That’s why it’s taken myself and others such a long time to find it.

“I’m a curious sort of guy and my immediate thought was that it wasn’t by chance – I thought, ‘what sort of event does it mark?’ So I went through the church calendar, and it got terribly complicated because in the 1600s they shifted it from Julian to Gregorian. But I realised that the one thing that would stay the same is the equinox.”

He added: “It’s a sort of camera obscura effect like at Stonehenge.”

There is nothing in the record books about the phenomenon, although Mr Buchanan believes that the window and statue were positioned by design because the window is conspicuously off-centre. …

via EDP24 – Solar calendar secret revealed in Suffolk church.