Gizmorama
March 7, 2011
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Good Morning,
Check out the first article for a heartwarming update on
space shuttle Discovery's final return to Earth. This article
will really inspire some pride in our capabilities as humans;
going where no man has gone before.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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'Star Trek' theme as Discovery leaves ISS
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The U.S. space shuttle Discovery
astronauts readied to undock from the International Space
Station Monday as they wrapped up Discovery's 13th and final
flight. They were to wake up at 3:23 a.m. EST to the "Theme
From 'Star Trek,'" which in the 1960s TV series began with
the now-famous "Space -- the final frontier" monologue
recited by series star William Shatner over an opening fan-
fare. The song -- punctuated at several points by the fic-
tional USS Enterprise flying toward and past the camera with
a "whoosh" sound -- received the second most public votes
from a Top 40 list in a NASA-sponsored song contest. Dis-
covery is to undock from the internationally developed
space station research facility about 7 a.m. Pilot Eric Boe
is to pull Discovery away from the station until it's about
400 feet in front of the lab complex, then guide the shuttle
through a 360-degree "victory lap" around the station for
photographs before leaving for good about 8:43 a.m., NASA
said. After a final heat-shield inspection, the astronauts
will pack up and test the shuttle's re-entry systems Tues-
day. It is expected to land at the Kennedy Space Center in
Cape Canaveral, Fla., just before noon Wednesday, closing
out its 39th and final mission. The shuttle and station
crews exchanged farewells before the hatch separating Dis-
covery from the space station closed at 4:11 p.m. Sunday.
Discovery commander Steve Lindsey thanked station commander
Scott Kelly on behalf of the six shuttle astronauts for the
hospitality. Kelly responded, "We're going to miss you, and
we're going to miss space shuttle Discovery," which he called
"a great ship" that supported the space station "more so, I
think, than any other shuttle." "We wish her fair winds and
following seas," he said. Discovery's crew delivered a
21,817-pound Permanent Multipurpose Module, nicknamed
"Leonardo," to the space station. The module, now permanently
docked to one of the station's ports, came loaded with
supplies and equipment and will be used for storage of
spares, supplies and waste, NASA said. The crew also brought
tons of equipment, experiment samples and a humanoid robot
dubbed "Robonaut," as well as 853 pounds of water, 112 pounds
of nitrogen and 182 pounds of oxygen. Shuttle astronauts
Alvin Drew and Stephen Bowen also carried out two successful
spacewalks to complete critical maintenance chores outside
the lab complex. The crew will take back to Earth 2 1/2 tons
of equipment and research samples it removed from the station.
Chemical can safely regulate plant growth
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - U.S. and Japanese researchers say
they've developed a new class of plant growth regulators
that are expected to be less toxic to humans. Growth regu-
lators are important in ornamental plants and horticultural
crops that require labor-intensive manipulation and pruning,
a Purdue University release explained Wednesday. They are
used to keep plants a desired size and shape, and to control
fruit formation. Angus Murphy, a Purdue professor of horti-
culture, says growth inhibitors work by blocking the movement
of auxin, a plant hormone that when transported throughout
the plant controls growth processes. Current regulators are
inefficient because they also have hormone-like affects on
other important plant processes, Murphy says, and also are
often toxic. The toxicity of growth regulators can be an
environmental concern and add safety and monitoring costs
to commercial growing operations. The new inhibitors, devel-
oped by Murphy and researchers at several Japanese univers-
ities, are derived from natural and artificial auxins but
have a chemical derived from benzoic acid attached that pre-
vents movement of the inhibitor out of the cell. "Since it
looks like auxin, it will open the door, but it can't get
through," Murphy said. "However, these new growth regulators
have no hormonal activity themselves." Companies licensed by
the Japanese institutes will continue environmental and
toxicity testing of the regulators in greenhouse and field
trials, the Purdue release said.
'Severe' spring weather seen for U.S.
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Forecasters are predicting a severe
spring 2011 U.S. weather season, including the spreading of
severe drought, a high wildfire danger and threats of
flooding. The spring's severe weather season will be more
active than normal, with a possibility of higher-than-average
numbers of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms in the eastern
part of the country, Accuweather.com reported Thursday. Paul
Pastelok of the AccuWeather.com Long-Range Forecasting Team
said he is concerned about abnormally dry and warm conditions
worsening a drought on the Plains and bringing high danger
of wildfires from the southern Plains into the interior
Southwest. "Heat will build from West Texas through the
Southwest early on, then gradually farther north and east
during the second half of spring," Pastelok said. As is the
case every year, the big concern for people across the
northern tier of the nation will be flooding, with melting
snow and spring storms bringing more snow and rain, he said.
The combination of the two significantly increases the
potential for disastrous flooding, he said, predicting areas
from southern Minnesota through the Ohio River and New
England would face the greatest risk for flooding. Colder-
than-normal conditions could hang on in areas from the
Pacific Northwest into the northern Plains through much of
March and April, with occasional episodes of gold getting
into the East through mid-March, Pastelok said.
Software can match sketches, mug shots
EAST LANSING, Mich. - U.S. researchers say a new technique
may soon automatically link hand-drawn police sketches of
suspects with mug shot photos in police databases. Michigan
State University researchers have developed a set of algor-
ithms and created software that will automatically match the
sketches to existing mug shots in the databases, a university
release reported Thursday. The implications are huge, a re-
searcher says. "We're dealing with the worst of the worst
here," MSU doctoral student Brendan Klare said. "Police
sketch artists aren't called in because someone stole a pack
of gum. A lot of time is spent generating these facial
sketches so it only makes sense that they are matched with
the available technology to catch these criminals." Artists'
sketches are drawn from witness descriptions but unfortun-
ately, Klare said, "often the facial sketch is not an accur-
ate depiction of what the person looks like." The project in
the MSU Department of Computer Science and Engineering is the
first large-scale experiment at matching forensic sketches
with photographs. "Using a database of more than 10,000 mug
shot photos, 45 percent of the time we had the correct
person," Klare said. All of the sketches used were from real
crimes where the criminal was later identified. "We don't
match them pixel by pixel," Anil Jain, director of the MSU
Pattern Recognition and Image Processing lab, said. "We match
them up by finding high-level features from both the sketch
and the photo; features such as the structural distribution
and the shape of the eyes, nose and chin."
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