Gizmorama
February 3, 2011
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Good Morning,
Sorry for the late mailing everyone! I underestimated the
snow storm that plowed through here on Tuesday, and our
office closed yesterday. I threw in an extra article today
since there were so many interesting things to look at. I
want to make note especially of the last article, which
explains the exciting landing phase of a real-time simu-
lated Mars mission that astronauts in Russia are under-
going.
Until Next Time,
Erin
Questions? Comments? Email me at: mailto:gizmo@gophercentral.com
Email your comments
P.S. You can discuss this issue or any other topic in the new
Gizmorama forum. Check it out here...
http://gizmorama.gophercentral.com
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Body scan 'generic form' being tested
WASHINGTON - The main airport in Las Vegas is the first test
site for new blurred body scanning software seen by both
screeners and passengers, federal officials said. The Trans-
portation Security Administration said the technology being
tried out at McCarran International Airport is designed to
detect potential explosive and show them on a blurred
"generic outline" of a person that will be identical for
all passengers and can be viewed by the scanner and the per-
son being scanned, USA Today reported Wednesday. "Testing
this new software will help us confirm test results that in-
dicate it can provide the same high level of security as
current advanced imaging technology units while further en-
hancing the privacy protections already in place," TSA Admin-
istrator John Pistole said. Tests of the software come after
travelers complained the machines showed a naked image of
them on a screen viewed by TSA security personnel. The TSA
is expected to introduce the software at Hartsfield-Jackson
Atlanta International and Ronald Reagan Washington National
within a few days, USA Today said. Nearly 500 scanners that
can penetrate clothing with wave or X-ray technology are at
78 airports nationwide, officials said. Travelers who refuse
to pass through them must undergo pat-down searches. The
new software is compatible with machines that use wave tech-
nology, the TSA said. If the software identify travelers as
carrying potential threats, additional screening would be
required; if not, "OK" appears on the monitor. Marc
Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, called the software "a filtering tech-
nique" that does little to blunt privacy concerns.
New laser zeroes in on molecules
HAMBURG, Germany - European scientists say a new X-ray laser
may let them watch individual molecules in action during pro-
cesses from brain-cell activity to photosynthesis. Research-
ers at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science in Hamburg,
Germany, say the new technique should be widely useful for
investigating protein molecules and the structure and activ-
ity of drugs, molecules for fuels and other materials,
ScienceDaily.com reported Wednesday. "This will be extremely
interesting in just about all biological systems," says phys-
icist Henry Chapman, a member of the two international teams
reporting on the technique in the journal Nature. "After
all, the reason we want to obtain high-resolution 3-D images
of proteins is to work out how they work and what they do."
The new Linac Coherent Light Source X-ray laser, which came
online in 2009 at the National Accelerator Laboratory in
Menlo Park, Calif., is so much brighter and faster than prev-
ious lasers that researchers hope the technique may reveal
molecules interacting in their native habitat. "The biggest
problem has been membrane-bound proteins -- they are very
hard to get a detailed view of," says biophysicist Sebastian
Doniach of Stanford University, who was not involved in the
research. "But these are the proteins that are really impor-
tant for understanding how things enter the cell, how cells
such as nerves signal, how drugs interact with a target cell."
'Space net' for orbiting debris proposed
TOKYO - Japan's space agency says it is teaming up with a
maker of fishing nets to create a "space net" for safely col-
lecting orbiting space debris. The Japan Aerospace Explor-
ation Agency and the Nitto Seimo Co. propose launching a
satellite, attached to a thin metal net spanning more than a
mile, into space before the net is detached and begins to
capture space waste while orbiting earth, Britain's Daily
Telegraph reported Tuesday. As it collects debris the net
would become electrically charged and be attracted back to
earth by the planet's magnetic field, causing the net and
its contents to safely burn up in the atmosphere. As many as
10 million pieces of "space junk" are estimated to be orbit-
ing Earth at any one time and are a cause for concern because
of the potential for collisions with satellites and shuttles.
Nitto Seimo, which became famous for inventing the world's
first machine to make strong knotless fishing nets in 1925,
says it has been researching super-strong space nets for six
years. The space net would consist of three layered metal
threads, each measuring 1mm diameter (0.03 inch) and inter-
twined with fibers as thin as human hair. Nitto Seimo says
its goal is to have the system developed with two years.
NASA announces discovery of more planets
GREENBELT, Md. - Scientists using NASA's Kepler space tele-
scopes say they've discovered six planets consisting of gases
and rocks around a single distant sun-like star. The planets
are orbiting a star dubbed Kepler-11 at a distance of about
2,000 light years from Earth, a NASA release said Wednesday.
"The Kepler-11 planetary system is amazing," said Jack
Lissauer of the Kepler science team at NASA's Ames Research
Center at Moffett Field, Calif. "It's amazingly compact, it's
amazingly flat, there's an amazingly large number of big
planets orbiting close to their star -- we didn't know such
systems could even exist." Scientists say it's the fullest,
most compact planetary system ever seen outside of our own
solar system. "Few stars are known to have more than one
transiting planet, and Kepler-11 is the first known star to
have more than three," said Lissauer. "So we know that sys-
tems like this are not common." "But whether it's one in a
thousand, one in 10 thousand or one in a million, that we
don't know, because we only have observed one of them. "By
measuring the sizes and masses of the five inner planets, we
have determined they are among the smallest confirmed exo-
planets, or planets beyond our solar system. These planets
are mixtures of rock and gases, possibly including water. The
rocky material accounts for most of the planets' mass, while
the gas takes up most of their volume." The Kepler spacecraft
will continue to observe the new Kepler-11 planetary system,
giving scientists more opportunity to estimate the sizes and
masses of the planets. "We're going to learn a fantastic
amount about the diversity of planets out there, around stars
within our galaxy," Lissauer said.
Virtual Mars mission approaching 'landing'
MOSCOW - The first full-duration simulation of a manned voy-
age to Mars has reached virtual Mars after 244 days of vir-
tual interplanetary flight, Russian officials said. Mars500,
an international study of the psychological and technical
issues involved in long spaceflights, has been running for
more than eight months in hermetically sealed modules imita-
ting a Mars spacecraft at the Institute of Biomedical Prob-
lems in Moscow, a European Space Agency release said Wednes-
day. The crew of three Russians, two Europeans and one
Chinese, living and working in the facility to simulate a
real expedition to Mars, will "land" Feb. 12 and conduct
three sorties onto a simulated Martian terrain, officials
said. The first expedition onto the simulated Martian sur-
face, housed in a large hall alongside the Mars500 modules,
will take place Feb. 14. Alexandr Smoleevskiy and Diego
Urbina will don spacesuits and exit the simulated lander's
airlock. The lander will be loaded with rubbish and unwanted
items Feb. 28 and the vehicle will be "abandoned" March 1,
as the "spacecraft" departs from Mars by virtually firing
its engines. The crew will endure another monotonous "inter-
planetary cruise" before arriving home in early November
2011. During the months of simulated flight, the crew has
been on a schedule similar to astronauts on the International
Space Station, filling work time during the "flight" with
maintenance work, scientific experiments and daily exercise.
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