Wendy Science: March 2015

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Sleek and Sexy Car, 1915

Innovation and discovery as chronicled in past issues of

Mar 17, 2015 | | race car from 1915

AERODYNAMIC PROTOTYPE: A streamlined road and race car from A.L.F.A. (later Alfa Romeo), 1915. Note how far back the steering wheel is.

A Coffee Maker for Space, Scratching Science and More: Scientific American’s April Issue

Neuroscientists thought memories were stored in the synapses connecting the brain’s neurons but they may reside in the neurons themselves. If supported, the work could have major implications for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Along with new findings in gray matter, a new telescopic array in New Mexico has found what might be : faint, incredibly diffuse galaxies hidden in the Coma galaxy cluster. Astronomers say that the “galactic ghosts” offer a good opportunity to study dark matter, which must be holding the galaxies together.

Another kind of “dark matter,” dark-colored fur, from dangerous UV rays. Biologists had previously noticed the trend toward dark coloring on birds and mammals in warmer climes, and now flowers have given them a hint as to why.

Also in sultry locales, a broad study of the world’s languages revealed that tonal tongues like Mandarin Chinese and Cherokee, which use different pitches to give words new meanings, . The effect rings true for opera singers, who have long known humidifiers help keep them in tune.

Also in April’s Advances:

Why We Need a DARPA for Education

Why the U.S. needs to establish a DARPA of pedagogy

Mar 17, 2015 | |

In a recent study sponsored by the Business Roundtable and the nonprofit group Change the Equation, 97 percent of the CEOs of major American companies identified a lack of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills among the national workforce as a problem for their businesses. Over the next five years these firms will need to hire approximately one million new employees with these skills and more than 600,000 with applied science backgrounds. The nation has been in this situation before. In 1944 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt commissioned Vannevar Bush, director of the wartime U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, to create a plan for sustaining the momentum of scientific achievement that had occurred during World War II, in part by responding to a looming skills shortage—the result of the large number of potential students who had been drafted into the military.

One of the biggest impacts of Bush's report was to create the separation of basic and applied research, a model that predominates in federally funded science today. Although this separation has been very effective in many fields, in education and the social sciences, basic research sometimes fails to translate successfully into applied settings. As we study ways to confront this new crisis, we should consider an alternative approach to research—one that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been demonstrating since 1958.

The DARPA process is reminiscent of the development cycles for radar and the atomic bomb during WWII: diverse teams of the brightest minds iterate continuously on basic research challenges aimed at solving enormously complex problems. Unlike traditional basic or applied research, the DARPA method resides in a category that the late science policy researcher Donald E. Stokes introduced in his 1997 book, . In Stokes's classification, basic research resides in Bohr's quadrant: it is the quest for basic knowledge without regard for the final use of that knowledge. Applied research lies in Edison's quadrant, where producing a specific product is the top priority. In Pasteur's quadrant, named after Louis Pasteur, basic research is applied to solve specific and immediate problems.

As an agency, DARPA lives in Pasteur's quadrant. Every project is a moon shot. The final goal is clear, but the process for getting there remains flexible. In the U.S. Department of Education's Office of STEM, we have been proposing the use of Pasteur's quadrant as a means for creating so-called moon shots for education, especially at the intersections of science and technology. The possibilities for research are plentiful. Can customized digital tutors be created that adapt to the student over the course of his or her education, from preschool through college? Can these same educational technologies be developed in ways that encourage and enhance lifelong learning? Can we find new approaches to assessment that measure mastery in real time rather than at the end of a course? If solutions such as these are possible, they will be achieved only by bringing together the most innovative teams of researchers, professional developers and educators to tackle the problems as a whole. That is why President Barack Obama's 2016 budget proposes up to $50 million for an Advanced Research Projects Agency–Education (ARPA-ED) to allow the Department of Education to support rapid-cycle, high-impact technology development aimed at preparing students for the 21st-century workforce.

To determine where investment should be made, my colleagues and I are currently convening groups of innovators and educators to evolve a vision of STEM education in 2025. Once that vision is clear, we will deconstruct it and outline a plan for achieving it. Will that vision be the correct one? It is hard to say, but this initial vision does not have to be absolutely correct. As long as the basic target of improving educational outcomes remains in sight, the goal and the vision can be adjusted as we work toward them. Just as DARPA researchers could not have predicted what the Internet would become when they laid its foundation in 1968, today's innovators will not know how technology can transform education until they roll up their sleeves and do it.

Glowing Tampons Highlight Sewer Pollution

Ordinary tampons can detect sewage pollution, a new study shows.

Testing for from leaky pipes or illegal drains can be expensive and time-consuming. For example, in 2007, contractors repeatedly poured dye down the toilets at Milwaukee's Miller Park stadium to track down one misconnected pipe. But deploying tampons in streams and stormwater systems offers several advantages over these traditional methods, the research suggests.

"It's cheap, it's easy and it does the detective work," said study co-author David Lerner, a professor of at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom.

The findings are published March 30 in the .

Finding sewer scofflaws usually means doing the tedious work of narrowing down the source of the pollution through dye tests, video camera inspections or repeated water sampling. Some people have even trained dogs to sniff out human waste. []

But study author Dave Chandler, the Sheffield graduate student who came up with the tampon test, needed a cheap way to monitor stream pollution, Lerner said. Chandler is studying how pollution impacts diatoms, a type of algae.

Chandler realized that tampons could absorb optical brighteners, which are additives in laundry detergent, toothpaste and other cleaners that make colors and whites seem cleaner and brighter.

"Tampons are about the only kind of cotton you can get cheaply that have no optical brighteners," Lerner told Live Science. These chemicals have no natural source, and are a hallmark of wastewater discharge. Scientists use optical brighteners as a quick way to detect the presence of sewage pollution because they glow in ultraviolet light. (This is why your clothes and teeth glow under UV lights in nightclubs.)

Chandler has shown tampons pick up even very small amounts of optical brighteners. The team's only hurdle was that people sometimes interfered and removed or threw away the tampons at test sites. "We just tried to hide them better," Lerner said.

Sewer sleuths

The technique was tested in 16 surface water sewers in Sheffield that drain into . Chandler suspended the tampons for three days in the sewers and then tested the tampons under UV light. Nine of the tampons glowed, confirming the presence of optical brighteners — and therefore human sewage pollution.

With help from the Yorkshire Water utility, the researchers tracked the contaminated pipe network manhole by manhole, dipping a tampon in at each manhole to narrow down the source. On one street, they found a house where a sink and soil stack (the soil vent pipe) were visibly connected to the wrong sewer pipe, the researchers said.

"Often the only way to be sure a house is misconnected is through a dye test," Lerner said. "It's clearly impractical for water companies to do this for all the households they supply, but by working back from where pollution is identified and narrowing it down to a particular section of the network, the final step of identifying the source then becomes feasible." []

In most U.S. cities, sewer networks are completely separate from storm water systems, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The sewer pipes carry to treatment plants, and the storm water drains and pipes funnel surface runoff to waterways such as streams, lakes and the ocean. If sewer pipes are misconnected to the storm water system, raw human sewage feeds directly into waterways where people swim, fish and drink. carry diseases such as norovirus and can alter the ecosystems in rivers and streams.

The tampon testing method needs to be validated with more thorough studies, but it holds promise for pinpointing the streets and neighborhoods where sewage leaks into waterways, said Sandra McLellan, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who was not involved in the study.

"The enormity of what needs to be screened is what makes me excited about this test," McLellan said. "Because it is a low-cost test, it's not hard to do those kind of [validation] studies."

Yes, try this at home

With , anyone can try this experiment at home, Lerner said. He plans to lead a citizen science project in the town of Bradford, England, to sample the waterways along the Bradford Beck river system. "I'm quite excited by this because I think it's going to be a really efficient way of doing this," Lerner said.

To test for optical brighteners in water, be sure to use a scientific control as a reference point, Lerner warned. For example, save back a dry tampon to look at.

Other than tampons, the only other necessities are an inexpensive UV light, like those sold to detect pet urine on carpets, and a completely dark room or black box. Lerner also said they used ordinary tampons, and you do not need to invest in organic or "natural" tampons.

In laboratory tests for the study, the researchers detected optical brighteners in a tampon dipped for just five seconds into a solution containing 0.01 milliliters of detergent per liter of water. That's more than 300 times weaker than would be expected in a surface water pipe, the researchers said.

Quit Smoking in Your Sleep

People smoke less after smelling cigarettes paired with rotten odors overnight

Feb 12, 2015 | |

Many decades of research have shown that people cannot learn new information during sleep and then retrieve it once awake. Yet a growing body of work finds that unconscious associations made during sleep can affect waking behaviors. One new study found that pairing the smell of cigarettes with unpleasant odors made people smoke less during the following week.

Neurobiologist Anat Arzi and her colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, recruited 66 smokers who wanted to quit and asked them to keep a smoking journal for a week before and a week after spending one night in the laboratory. Some subjects spent the night hooked up to devices that measured breathing and brain activity while they received puffs of the smell of smoked cigarettes followed by puffs of the odor of rotten eggs or decaying fish through a face mask. Other subjects underwent the same odor training during the day while awake. Smokers who got the putrid smells during the restful second stage of sleep cut their smoking by more than 30 percent during the following week. In contrast, subjects who received the odor treatment during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, an aroused brain state that gives rise to dreams, had a much smaller reduction in smoking, around 12 percent. Smokers trained while awake did not change their smoking behavior.

Arzi presented the work last November at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, D.C. She says that the preliminary study was aimed at determining what the sleeping brain is capable of but that the findings might one day be developed into treatments for smoking or other addictive behaviors.

Monday, March 30, 2015

How to Help Prevent Cutting Down the Amazon

Even if you live far away what you buy can help shape the future of the Brazilian rainforest

March 30, 2015 | |

Even if you live thousands of miles away, you can help prevent deforestation in the tropical rainforests of the Amazon and elsewhere by making smart consumer choices.

Dear EarthTalk: What can I do to help prevent deforestation in the Amazon even if I don’t live in the region?

The fact that our climate, our air and our water know no national borders means that the forests are our mutual responsibility. We all depend on their services and we all play a part in causing deforestation even if we live far away geographically. Also, deforestation is occurring everywhere on the planet, not just the in the Amazon rainforest, so doing your part locally could help retain tree cover and improve air quality in your region.

Most if not all deforestation is ultimately driven by our consumption, so avoiding products and companies responsible for deforestation is the logical first step. While it may seem obvious, asking about the source of the wood you are using on your next home repair project—and rejecting it if it comes from the tropical rainforest—will help efforts to prevent deforestation. Mahogany, ipê and other tropical hardwoods should be avoided unless they are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, a non-profit which vets sustainably harvested timber operations around the world.

Another way to do your part to fight deforestation is to cut back on or eliminate meat from your diet. Cattle from the Amazon basin are most likely raised on ranches that used to be part of the rainforest. Likewise, expanding soybean farms in Brazil to feed cattle is a huge reason for Amazon deforestation. If you can’t give up meat entirely, at least eat less and get it from local producers practicing organic techniques. Meatless Monday, a project of the Center for a Livable Future (CLF) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, provides many resources and ideas to try to get Americans to cut their meat consumption by at least 15 percent.

The expansion of palm oil plantations in tropical regions is the latest insult to tropical rainforests. Making your own homemade food and health/beauty products is one way to be sure you are avoiding palm oil, but you could also start by researching what you want online to find the best ready-made choices free of palm oil. Ethical Consumer’s Palm Oil Free Product List, which includes dozens of rainforest-friendly baby foods, cereal bars, chocolate bars, pet foods, shampoos and soaps, is a good place to start.

And who knew that resisting the urge to upgrade your perfectly good cell phone or computer could help prevent deforestation? Mining throughout tropical regions in Central Africa and beyond for metals and minerals that go into our electronics leads to wide swaths of rainforest destruction as well. Buying electronics made from recycled materials when possible and avoiding products with built-in “planned obsolescence”—your old phone will probably work well for a few more years—are more ways to be part of the solution.

And of course, there’s no better way to fight deforestation than by planting trees. The Arbor Day Foundation provides lots of tips for starting or joining a tree planting campaign in your neck of the woods.

CONTACTS: Forest Stewardship Council, ; Meatless Monday, http://ift.tt/mU7cUj; Ethical Consumer’s Palm Oil Free List, ; Arbor Day Foundation, .

EarthTalk® is produced by Doug Moss & Roddy Scheer and is a registered trademark of Earth Action Network Inc. View past columns at: . Or e-mail us your question: .

Air Quality in Bed Is a Nightmare

Pillows, bedding and tossing and turning all influence what you inhale while fast asleep

Mar 17, 2015 | |

If the average American lives to be 78 years old, roughly a third of those years are spent lying on a mattress. Brandon Boor, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, studies air pollutants in the sleep microenvironment. In his most recent study, detailed in the journal , Boor covered a twin mattress with 225-thread-count sheets and seeded the bed with artificial dust as a proxy for the microorganisms, fungal spores and skin cells that routinely collect there. Volunteers dressed in clean suits then sat and spun around on the bed—all inside a sealed chamber—while instruments measured the particles that were kicked up and could be inhaled by the subjects. The concentrations are minute, measured in parts per million, but could affect us because we spend eight hours every day in “uncustomary proximity” to bedding and mattresses. The time spent under roofs in general has led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conclude that health risks such as asthma and chronic heart problems from exposure to indoor air pollution may be greater than the risks from outdoor pollution. When it comes to bedtime, blankets and sleeping behaviors, among other factors, determine the extent to which “we are such stuff as dreams are made on.”

Mexico Makes Landmark Pledge to Cut Greenhouse Gas Pollution

Mexico has pledged to unilaterally peak its greenhouse gas emissions by 2026 in a detailed climate change plan that is the first of its kind among developing nations.

The target unveiled Friday, which also calls for cutting carbon 22 percent below business-as-usual levels by 2030, will become Mexico's official contribution to a global climate change accord. That agreement is expected to be signed in Paris in December and include, for the first time ever, carbon-cutting measures from developed and developing nations alike.

The White House praised the Mexican government for "setting an example for the rest of the world" with its climate plan.

"In particular, Mexico's target to peak its emissions by 2026 and drive them down thereafter is a landmark step in the global transition to a low-carbon economy," the White House said in a statement. "We hope that Mexico's actions will encourage other economies to submit [plans] that are ambitious, timely, transparent, detailed, and achievable."

Tomorrow marks the first informal deadline for countries to come forward with their plans, dubbed "intended nationally determined contributions," or INDCs, in U.N. lingo. The United States and European Union had pushed for major emitters—and particularly governments of G-20 nations—to unveil their plans by the end of March. So far, though, only the European Union, Switzerland and Norway have joined Mexico in doing so.

China has vowed to peak its emissions by 2030, but several people close to the Chinese delegation say the government's more detailed plan has likely been pushed back to this summer.

U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern has said the United States' submission will be released by tomorrow. While the targets are already known—Obama has vowed the United States will curb carbon by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025—the plan will offer more details about how the administration will achieve the goal.

According to two people familiar with parts of the U.S. submission, it will lay out a wide range of regulatory efforts that go well beyond the Clean Air Act, under which Obama is currently using executive authority to demand curbs of power plant emissions. From Department of Energy efficiency regulations to state-level initiatives, sources said, the INDC will send a message to the international community that the U.S. climate plan does not rely on President Obama alone.

It will also make the case that the target is fair and ambitious but will not reference a global carbon budget or concepts of equity based on historic emissions. Instead, sources said, the plan will repeat much of what Obama said publicly when he first made the 2025 pledge—that it doubles the pace at which the United States is reducing greenhouse gases.

Mexico: 'We stand by our words'

"We are trying to show that what we say in the negotiations, we stand by our words. Second, we want to show that it is feasible," said Roberto Dondisch Glowinski, Mexico's lead negotiator to the U.N. climate talks.

Mexico in 2012 was the first developing country to enact a national climate law. The legislation called for the country to curb emissions 30 percent below business-as-usual growth by 2030 and 50 percent by midcentury, but those targets were conditional upon international assistance.

The new plan says the country will cut 22 percent no matter what the rest of the world contributes, while also cutting 51 percent of emissions from black carbon by 2030. The White House on Friday also announced a joint U.S.-Mexico task force to help the country achieve its goals (, March 27).

Another failed promise?

"As a country that enacted a groundbreaking, comprehensive climate change law in 2012, Mexico clearly understands the threat of climate change and the economic benefits of smart action for its citizens and is now going further. Other countries should follow Mexico's lead and present robust action plans very soon," said Jennifer Morgan, global director of the World Resources Institute's climate team, in a statement.

She and others noted that the "devil is in the details" of Mexico's plan but called the promise of a peak by 2026 "inspiring."

Critics of the international climate negotiations process were less impressed. Frank Maisano, a lobbyist at Bracewell & Giuliani in Washington, D.C., who represents energy-industry clients, said plans don't count as much as action.

"Maybe they get around to doing it, maybe they don't. The fact of the matter is, we are going to hear a steady stream of 'Oh, look at what we're going to do.' But this is no different than when we were in Buenos Aires; this is no different than when we were in the Hague; this is no different than Copenhagen," Maisano said, referencing the sites of key U.N. climate summits over the past two decades.

He argued that countries have made scores of promises at these climate meetings that have gone unmet. "I've been at the rodeo before, and I'm skeptical. I will be skeptical until people actually start to do what they say they're going to do," he said.

Activists and diplomats maintained that Paris is shaping up to be fundamentally different than the climate promises that have come before. Whereas in the past developing countries set targets contingent upon how much money the industrialized West would deliver, under the new deal, nations will be expected to curb emissions regardless of monetary aid.

"We want to show that it can be done. As a developing country, we have to participate," Glowinski said. "It's very complicated for an economy that is still growing. ... Believe me, these numbers are not going to be easy for us, but we are committed."

www.eenews.net

Exercises Improve Memory in Older Adults

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When Mick Jagger first sang “what a drag it is getting old,” he was 23 years old. Now at 71, he is still a veritable Jumpin' Jack Flash on stage. Jagger seems to have found the secret to staying physically fit in his advancing years, but getting old can be a drag on the psyche. Many older adults fear memory loss and worry they are headed down the road to dementia, such as Alzheimer's disease. Every time they forget their keys, leave a door unlocked or fail to remember a name, they are reminded of this nagging concern. In most cases, however, such annoying incidents are part of normal age-related memory loss, not a sign of impending dementia.

Although lots of older adults think such a decline is inevitable, there is good news for many of them. Researchers have developed an array of activities for exercising our minds and bodies that can help shore up memory in the normal aging brain.

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Self-Control: The Secret to Life’s Successes

Self-control is not just a puritanical virtue. It is a key psychological trait that breeds success at work and play—and in overcoming life's hardships

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The ability to regulate our impulses and desires is indispensable to success in living and working with others. People with good control over their thought processes, emotions and behaviors not only flourish in school and in their jobs but are also healthier, wealthier and more popular. And they have better intimate relationships (as their partners confirm) and are more trusted by others. What is more, they are less likely to go astray by getting arrested, becoming addicted to drugs or experiencing unplanned pregnancies. They even live longer. Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho summed up these benefits in one of his novels: “If you conquer yourself, then you will conquer the world.”

Self-control is another name for changing ourselves—and it is by far the most critical way we have of adapting to our environment. Indeed, the desire to control ourselves and our environment is deeply rooted in the psyche and underlies human engagement in science, politics, business and the arts. Given that most of us lack the kingly power to command others to do our bidding and that we need to enlist the cooperation of others to survive, the ability to restrain aggression, greed and sexual impulses becomes a necessity.

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Conquering Space

Black Hole “Firewalls” Could Change Physics Forever

“Firewalls” of particles may border black holes, confounding both general relativity and quantum mechanics

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Falling into a black hole was never going to be fun. As soon as physicists realized that black holes exist, we knew that getting too close to one spelled certain death. But we used to think that an astronaut falling past the point of no return—the so-called event horizon—would not feel anything special. According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, no signposts would mark the spot where the chance of escape dropped to zero. Anyone journeying past the horizon would just seem to fall down, down, down into a pit of blackness.

Recently, however, my colleagues and I have recast that picture in light of some new information about the effects of quantum mechanics on black holes. It now seems that our astronaut would have an experience very different from Albert Einstein's prediction. Rather than falling seamlessly into the interior, the astronaut would encounter a “firewall” of high-energy particles at the horizon that would be instantly lethal. The wall might even mark the end of space.

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Conquering Space

NASA Assures Skeptical Congress That James Webb Telescope Is on Track

The program will not repeat past mistakes, officials vow, and will launch as planned in 2018 March 30, 2015 | |

A telescope project that has become notorious for its ballooning cost and repeated delays has lately been operating on schedule and within budget, NASA officials told Congress last week. One of the most ambitious and powerful observatories ever built, the $8.8-billion (JWST) is on track to launch in 2018, said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.Northrop Grumman, the prime contractor hired to , has lately been troubleshooting a problem with the “cryocooler” meant to stop heat from interfering with the telescope’s sensitive infrared camera, which requires frigid temperatures to see such long wavelengths. The issue raised fears in Congress that the observatory would be delayed, or worse—that it might not work, just as its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, failed to operate properly at first and had to be repaired by shuttle astronauts. Unlike Hubble, however, James Webb is not designed to be serviced in space. “Whatever we put up has to work the first time,” Oklahoma Republican Rep. Frank Lucas said at the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Space hearing. “Those of us who were paying attention 25 years ago remember the initial trauma after the launch of Hubble. Let’s talk for a moment about this cryocooler business.”Telescope managers assured the representatives that the cryocooler problems were under control, and that the difficulties were reasonable given that the instrument must operate at much colder temperatures than previous coolers. “This is a very challenging job—in fact more challenging than we anticipated,” said Jeffrey Grant, sector vice president and general manager of space systems at Northrop Grumman. “We’ve made great progress.”The JWST is designed to look farther into the universe than ever before, to spot some of the first stars and galaxies that formed around 13 billion years ago. Back before 2000 NASA officials estimated the telescope’s price tag at around $1 billion, and expected it to be able to launch between 2007 and 2011. After , Congress altogether. But a replan and management overhaul in 2011 saved the scope and put in place the new 2018 deadline.With just three years remaining before JWST’s planned launch onboard a European Space Agency Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, NASA has 10 months of “margin” left in the schedule to accommodate delays without pushing back the launch date. That is more time than most NASA projects have at this stage, Grunsfeld said. Still, there is not much room for more problems like the cryocooler. “While 10 months is still a lot of time and well within the program, there are still reasons to be concerned,” said Cristina Chaplain of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which has been overseeing progress on the JWST. “Most space projects encounter problems they did not expect to encounter in this phase.” Rep. Donna Edwards (D–Md.) wondered if 10 months was enough: “The question is how much the cryocooler is going to eat into that reserve.”Chaplain also complained that Northrop Grumman refused to allow GAO officers to interview its employees anonymously during the oversight analysis. “This is a key best practice and a fundamental part of our methodology,” she said. “Anytime we are denied access to people or documents we are concerned because it could be a sign that an entity is concerned about what we will find.” Grumman insisted the interviews would have been unfair to its workers. “It wasn’t just anonymous but isolating our junior employees,” Grant said. “I was unwilling to send these employees in by themselves.”Ultimately NASA managers held firm that the JWST will not be delayed again. “The James Webb Space Telescope has been making exceptional progress,” Grunsfeld said. “I have confidence that we will be ready to launch this ambitious observatory in 2018.”After the telescope launches, the biggest slice of the NASA budget—the JWST development funding—will be freed up for future years. Partisans for different projects are already eyeing that money, and lawmakers questioned how NASA plans to divvy up the spoils. “With overall budgets remaining flat, how the other $600 million a year will be reallocated after launch is one of the most important decisions facing NASA and the Congress,” said Space Subcommittee Chair Rep. Steven Palazzo (R–Miss.). He advocated distributing it among the programs, particularly in the planetary sciences, that were squeezed to route money to the JWST. For the sake of future projects as well as the beleaguered scope, both lawmakers and the aerospace teams are crossing their fingers for 2018.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

My Favorite Book of 2014

The Most Magnificent Thing is hands-down my favorite book of 2014, and I am so grateful to Alyson Beecher for urging me to read it. Thanks, Alyson! Oh, how I wish this book had been eligible for the Caldecott. But alas, its uber-talented author-illustrator resides in Canada.

Why do I love The Most Magnificent Thing so much? Because it deftly introduces young readers to the trials and triumphs of the creative process.

The unnamed main character decides to design and build something special for her very best friend, her dog.“ She knows just how it will look. She knows just how it will work. All she has to do is make it, and she makes things all the time. Easy-peasy!" So she "tinkers and hammers and measures," she "smoothes and wrenches and fiddles," she "twists and tweaks and fastens."

But making her magnificent thing is anything but easy, and after several failures, she decides to quit. But later, she comes back to her project with renewed enthusiasm and manages to get it just right.

The Most Magnificent Thing is perfectly suited for STEM lessons as well as makerspaces because it expertly models the process engineers and inventors go through as they try to solve problems. But it also spoke to me because I saw my own creative process as a writer reflected in its pages. That makes it a great choice for Writer’s Workshop as well.

Readers Respond to "World Changing Ideas"

CANCER TREATMENT IN SENIORSNever Too Old for Chemo,” by Claudia Wallis [The Science of Health], a welcome and long overdue antidote to the conventional wisdom that it is best for sick old people to bow out quickly, gracefully and inexpensively. (You bet I'll opt for aggressive treatment if I get cancer when I'm 100!)

Yet I'm uneasy about considering such factors as “social support” in determining which elderly patients should be eligible for chemotherapy. Doing so risks discriminating against patients who lack families—or whose families would prefer that their old folk be “allowed” to die even if they want to live.

FELICIA NIMUE ACKERMAN

I would say that deciding whether to opt in to, or out of, aggressive therapies such as chemotherapy to treat cancer would greatly depend on what type of malignancy a person has. Wallis's father-in-law, whom she describes as deciding against treatment, had what most people would consider a “certain death sentence”: advanced, metastatic pancreatic cancer. Two other elders described in the article, who decided to fight, respectively, bladder cancer and lymphoma, were, it is hoped, not coerced by family members or physicians.

There are cancers that can be fought with chemotherapy, at any age, but many factors have to be weighed.

GORDON W. REITER

POLICE BODY CAMSCaution: Cops with Cameras,” the editors warn that further planning and research should precede more police departments adopting body cameras to record encounters between their officers and the public.

I think helpful information could be gleaned from the Federal Aviation Administration on the effects, bad and good, of workers and their charges being monitored. Airline pilots and air-traffic controllers may have their words recorded and stored for a while in the event that something happens. In addition, pilots have a “black box” watching their control inputs, and controllers may have their radar scopes recorded.

Because this approach seems to be fairly new to police departments, perhaps it would help for the faa to share any information that might be useful.

JEFF OTTAWAY

RESEARCH ETHICSThe Gene Genie,” Margaret Knox describes ethical concerns about the technology. These concerns can be extrapolated to a significant issue with research in general: that we must be mindful of ethical, legal and social implications.

Most scientific endeavors can have positive or negative applications but often just have ethically agnostic ones. Yet the typical ex post facto, knee-jerk, reactionary rules to regulate these endeavors—commonly based solely on fears of misuse—are at best misguided and are, in many instances, actually detrimental to the promotion of science.

As such, these issues should be brought up early in the course of basic science research and the development of new technologies. Any subsequent resulting restrictions on science and technology ought to always be balanced against the real possibility of impeding those innovations.

DOV GREENBAUM

CONFIRMED CONSPIRACYConspiracy Central” is that it treats all “conspiracy theories” as roughly equal and implies that anybody who lends credence to even one such “theory” must have deep psychological problems. It certainly couldn't be because there might be actual evidence to support the conclusion that a conspiracy of some kind exists.

Regarding the events of 9/11, I would point out that the official version of what happened must be considered a “conspiracy theory.” It has all four necessary elements that Shermer himself quotes from Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent's book on the subject: “(1) A group (2) acting in secret (3) to alter institutions … (4) at the expense of the common good.”

Whether Shermer subscribes to the official 9/11 story or the “inside job” account, he must be a conspiracy theorist himself!

YOLANDA DEBYLE

UNBEARABLE FRUITPain That Won't Quit” reminded me of a problem I had 30 years ago. My feet were in constant pain. Doctors were not very helpful, and I thought that it was because I was running a mile or so every morning.

What I found out was that it was because of eating fruit: I drank a glass of orange juice every morning. When I went on a trip for a week and didn't drink juice, my feet quit hurting. When I tried drinking it again, the pain would come back. Other fruits such as strawberries cause problems for me, too. So the pain other people get might be from something they eat or drink.

PAUL HART

ERRATA

“Taking the Sting Out of Pain,” by Mark Peplow, which is an accompanying sidebar to “Pain That Won't Quit,” by Stephani Sutherland, erroneously refers to the painkilling drug ziconotide as based on a molecule from the venomous cone snail species . It was from another cone snail, . The new research described in the article involves painkillers derived from .

CLARIFICATION

U.S. Set to Meet Global-Warming Plan Deadline with UN

A U.S. plan will be submitted early this week but most governments will miss an informal March 31 deadline, complicating work on a global climate deal due in December

March 29, 2015

* About 30 nations to meet March 31 climate deadline

* Mexico is first emerging economy to submit plan

By Alister Doyle and Valerie Volcovici

OSLO/WASHINGTON, March 29 - The United States will submit plans for slowing global warming to the United Nations early this week but most governments will miss an informal March 31 deadline, complicating work on a global climate deal due in December.

The U.S. submission, on Monday or Tuesday according to a White House official, adds to national strategies beyond 2020 already presented by the 28-nation European Union, Mexico, Switzerland and Norway.

Together, they account for about a third of world greenhouse emissions. But other emitters such as China, India, Russia, Brazil, Canada and Australia say they are waiting until closer to a Paris summit in December, meant to agree a global deal.

"It's not the ideal situation," said Niklas Hoehne, founding partner of the New Climate Institute in Germany which tracks submissions, known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).

In 2013, the United Nations invited INDCs by March 31, 2015, from governments "ready to do so" - the early, informal deadline was meant to give time to compare pledges and toughen weak ones.

Late submissions complicate the Paris summit because it will be far harder to judge late INDCs.

"The earlier the better," said Jake Schmidt, of the U.S. National Resources Defense Council. "It allows people to look at each others' targets and judge whether or not they pass muster."

The White House official noted that both the United States and China already outlined plans last year, saying: "That adds up to a fantastic running start."

The United States plans to cut emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

Mexico on Friday became the first emerging economy to make a pledge, saying its emissions would peak by 2026. Developing countries set less strict goals than developed states since they need to burn more energy to grow their economies.

Mexico's plan "certainly should create incentives for developed countries to come in," said Jennifer Morgan, of the World Resources Institute, noting rich nations are meant to lead.

The U.N. Climate Change Secretariat will compile by Nov. 1 submissions made by October 1.

It says it is already clear that INDCs will fall short of emissions cuts needed to limit temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, a U.N. ceiling to avert floods, desertification, and rising seas.

"We expect many more countries to submit INDCs over the coming days, weeks and months," said Nick Nuttall, spokesman for the Secretariat. (Reporting By Alister Doyle and Valerie Volcovici; editing by William Hardy)

Stephen Hawking and Brian Cox To Trademark Their Names

"Stephen Hawking" and "Brian Cox" will be trademark names very soon. So if you have plans to market t-shirts and other products with these people's names, watch out!

Maybe this will get rid of some of the tacky stuff that I've seen associated to them, especially Hawking. But then again, who knows, they may turn around and produce their own tacky merchandise.

Zz.

A Tale Of Two Scientists

It is fascinating to read about the stuff behind the scene involving the negotiations between the United States and Iran regarding Iran's nuclear program. And in the middle of all this are two scientists/engineers out of MIT with nuclear science background.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the mid-1970s, Ernest J. Moniz was an up-and-coming nuclear scientist in search of tenure, and Ali Akbar Salehi, a brilliant Iranian graduate student, was finishing a dissertation on fast-neutron reactors.

The two did not know each other, but they followed similar paths once they left the campus: Mr. Moniz went on to become one of the nation’s most respected nuclear physicists and is now President Obama’s energy secretary. Mr. Salehi, who was part of the last wave of Iranians to conduct nuclear studies at America’s elite universities, returned to an Iran in revolution and rose to oversee the country’s nuclear program.

You may read more about it in the article. And I definitely agree with this sentiment:

Mr. Moniz, 70, understands his role well: He is providing not only technical expertise but also political cover for Mr. Kerry. If a so-called framework agreement is reached in the next few days, it will be Mr. Moniz who will have to vouch to a suspicious Congress, to Israel and to Arab allies that Iran would be incapable of assembling the raw material for a single nuclear weapon in less than a year.

“It wouldn’t mean much coming from Kerry,” said a member of the administration deeply involved in the strategy who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The theory is that Ernie’s judgment on that matter is unassailable.”

At the heart of this is a scientific/technical issues. Now once presented, it is up to the politicians to decide, because beyond that, it is no longer a science/technical decision, but a political one. To have someone, a negotiator, who is not only knowledgeable in that area, but also who happens to be a world-renowned expert, is extremely beneficial.

Zz.

Saturday, March 28, 2015

April Book Reviews Roundup

This article was originally published with the title "Recommended."

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Conquering Space

Memories May Not Live in Neurons’ Synapses

The finding could mean recollections are more enduring than expected and disrupt plans for PTSD treatments

Mar 17, 2015 | |

As intangible as they may seem, memories have a firm biological basis. According to textbook neuroscience, they form when neighboring brain cells send chemical communications across the synapses, or junctions, that connect them. Each time a memory is recalled, the connection is reactivated and strengthened. The idea that synapses store memories has dominated neuroscience for more than a century, but a new study by scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, may fundamentally upend it: instead memories may reside brain cells. If supported, the work could have major implications for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition marked by painfully vivid and intrusive memories.

More than a decade ago scientists began investigating the drug propranolol for the treatment of PTSD. Propranolol was thought to prevent memories from forming by blocking production of proteins required for long-term storage. Unfortunately, the research quickly hit a snag. Unless administered immediately after the traumatic event, the treatment was ineffective. Lately researchers have been crafting a work-around: evidence suggests that when someone recalls a memory, the reactivated connection is not only strengthened but becomes temporarily susceptible to change, a process called memory reconsolidation. Administering propranolol (and perhaps also therapy, electrical stimulation and certain other drugs) during this window can enable scientists to block reconsolidation, wiping out the synapse on the spot.

The possibility of purging recollections caught the eye of David Glanzman, a neurobiologist at U.C.L.A., who set out to study the process in , a sluglike mollusk commonly used in neuroscience research. Glanzman and his team zapped with mild electric shocks, creating a memory of the event expressed as new synapses in the brain. The scientists then transferred neurons from the mollusk into a petri dish and chemically triggered the memory of the shocks in them, quickly followed by a dose of propranolol.

Initially the drug appeared to confirm earlier research by wiping out the synaptic connection. But when cells were exposed to a reminder of the shocks, the memory came back at full strength within 48 hours. “It was totally reinstated,” Glanzman says. “That implies to me that the memory wasn't stored in the synapse.” The results were recently published in the online open-access journal eLife.

If memory is not located in the synapse, then where is it? When the neuroscientists took a closer look at the brain cells, they found that even when the synapse was erased, molecular and chemical changes persisted after the initial firing within the cell itself. The engram, or memory trace, could be preserved by these permanent changes. Alternatively, it could be encoded in modifications to the cell's DNA that alter how particular genes are expressed. Glanzman and others favor this reasoning.

Eric R. Kandel, a neuroscientist at Columbia University and recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on memory, cautions that the study's results were observed in the first 48 hours after treatment, a time when consolidation is still sensitive.

Though preliminary, the results suggest that for people with PTSD, pill popping will most likely not eliminate painful memories. “If you had asked me two years ago if you could treat PTSD with medication blockade, I would have said yes, but now I don't think so,” Glanzman says. On the bright side, he adds, the idea that memories persist deep within brain cells offers new hope for another disorder tied to memory: Alzheimer's.

Friday, March 27, 2015

How Grandparents Shaped Human Evolution

The rise of senior citizens may have played a big role in the success of our species

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During the summer of 1963, when i was six years old, my family traveled from our home in Philadelphia to Los Angeles to visit my maternal relatives. I already knew my grandmother well: she helped my mother care for my twin brothers, who were only 18 months my junior, and me. When she was not with us, my grandmother lived with her mother, whom I met that summer for the first time. I come from a long-lived family. My grandmother was born in 1895 and her mother in the 1860s; both lived almost 100 years. We stayed with the two matriarchs for several weeks. Through their stories, I learned about my roots and where I belonged in a social network spanning four generations. Their reminiscences personally connected me to life at the end of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era and to the challenges my ancestors faced and the ways they persevered.

My story is not unique. Elders play critical roles in human societies around the globe, conveying wisdom and providing social and economic support for the families of their children and larger kin groups. In our modern era, people routinely live long enough to become grandparents. But this was not always the case. When did grandparents become prevalent, and how did their ubiquity affect human evolution?

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Book Review: Dragonflies

Books and recommendations from

Mar 17, 2015

Dragonflies: Magnificent Creatures of Water, Air, and LandYale University Press, 2015 ($35)

Van Dokkum is an astronomer with a passion for dragonflies. When he is not imaging distant objects in the cosmos using some of the world's most powerful telescopes, he produces close-up photographs of one of the universe's smaller inhabitants: the dragonfly. In this large-format book, van Dokkum captures the exquisite colors and varied features of the insects, portraying the creatures' full life cycle, from the time a larval “nymph” metamorphoses into an adult dragonfly through mating and eventually death at the hands of bird predators, spider webs, cold weather or other mishaps. Captions and commentary fill out the pictures, tracing the short but curious lives of dragonflies.

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For more recommendations and to watch a video of dragonfly metamorphosis, go to

Book Review: Dragonflies

Books and recommendations from

Mar 17, 2015

Dragonflies: Magnificent Creatures of Water, Air, and LandYale University Press, 2015 ($35)

MORE TO EXPLORE

For more recommendations and to watch a video of dragonfly metamorphosis, go to

How Grandparents Shaped Human Evolution

The rise of senior citizens may have played a big role in the success of our species

By THIS IS A PREVIEW.to access the full article.Already purchased this issue?

THIS IS A PREVIEW.to access the full article.Already purchased this issue? Buy Digital Issue$9.99 You May Also Like

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Torn-Up Sick Notes Show Crash Pilot Should Have Been Grounded

By Tom Käckenhoff

DUESSELDORF, Germany, March 27 (Reuters) - German authorities found torn-up sick notes showing that the pilot who crashed a plane into the French Alps was suffering from an illness that should have grounded him on the day of the tragedy, which he apparently hid from the airline.

French prosecutors believe Andreas Lubitz, 27, locked himself alone in the cockpit of the Germanwings Airbus A320 on Tuesday and deliberately steered it into a mountain, killing all 150 people on board.

"Documents with medical contents were confiscated that point towards an existing illness and corresponding treatment by doctors," said the prosecutors' office in Duesseldorf, where the co-pilot lived and where the doomed flight from Barcelona was heading.

"The fact there are sick notes saying he was unable to work, among other things, that were found torn up, which were recent and even from the day of the crime, support the assumption based on the preliminary examination that the deceased hid his illness from his employer and his professional colleagues," the German prosecutors said.

They found no suicide note or confession, "nor was there any evidence of a political or religious background to what happened", they added.

Lubitz's mental health - and what Germanwings and parent company Lufthansa knew about it - could become central questions in any future legal case over the crash. Under German law, employees are required to inform their employers immediately if they are unable to work.

Reports in German media suggested that Lubitz had suffered from depression in the past, and that Lufthansa would have been aware of at least some of that history.

Germany's Bild newspaper reported on Friday that Lubitz had suffered from depression during a period when he broke off his training six years ago. It said he spent over a year in psychiatric treatment.

Lufthansa has acknowledged Lubitz broke off his training in 2009 but says there was nothing in his background to suggest he was a risk.

"After he was cleared again, he resumed training. He passed all the subsequent tests and checks with flying colours," Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said on Thursday.

Bild, citing internal documents forwarded by Lufthansa's Aero Medical Center to German authorities, reported that Lubitz had suffered from depression and anxiety, and had been judged to have suffered a "serious depressive episode" around the time he suspended his training.

Lufthansa and German prosecutors declined to comment on the report.

An international agreement generally limits airline liability to around $157,400 for each passenger who dies in a crash if families do not sue, but if families want to pursue compensation for greater damages, they can file lawsuits.

"I DON'T FEEL ANGER"

Lawyers who have represented families in past airline disasters told Reuters that potential lawsuits could focus on whether Germanwings properly screened the co-pilot before and during his employment, and on whether the airline should have had a policy requiring two or more people in its cockpits at all times during a flight.

Several airlines swiftly changed their cockpit rules to require a second crew member on the flight deck within hours after French prosecutors disclosed their theory that the crash was deliberate.

Lufthansa announced on Friday that it too would change its rules to require a second crew member in the cockpit, a reversal after Spohr initially said on Thursday he saw no need to do so. Such measures are already required in the United States but not in Europe.

Robert Tansell Oliver, whose 37-year-old American son Robert Oliver Calvo was killed in the crash, said the family was not eager to sue. His son, a father of two small children, had been working for a fashion company in Barcelona.

"I don't feel anger. I'm really sorry for the parents of that young pilot. I can't imagine what they are going through right now," the father said outside a hotel near Barcelona airport where family members of victims have been staying.

"MAD SUICIDAL ACTION"

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the German airline had an obligation to share all information on Lubitz with investigators.

"I am careful when there is a judicial inquiry, but everything points to a criminal, mad, suicidal action that we cannot comprehend," Valls told iTELE. "It is up to this company to provide a maximum of information so that we can understand why this pilot committed this dreadful act."

Lubitz was described by acquaintances in his hometown of Montabaur in western Germany as a friendly but quiet man who learned to fly gliders at a local club before advancing to commercial aviation as a co-pilot at Germanwings in 2013.

A friend who met Lubitz six years ago and flew with him in gliding school said he had become increasingly withdrawn over the past year.

Before Lubitz became a co-pilot in late 2013, the friend said the two had gone to movies and clubs together. But he noticed at two birthday parties they attended over the past year that he had retreated into a shell, speaking very little.

"Flying was his life," said the friend, who agreed to speak to Reuters about Lubitz's mental state on condition of anonymity. "He always used to be a quiet companion, but in the last year that got worse." (Additional reporting by Tom Kaeckenhoff in Duesseldorf, Victoria Bryan and Michelle Martin in Berlin, Andy Callus in Paris, Marco Trujillo in Barcelona; Writing by Noah Barkin and Peter Graff; Editing by Janet McBride and Giles Elgood)

Lufthansa to Toughen Up Cockpit Rules

The airliner will introduce new rules requiring two crew members to be in the cockpit at all times after one of the pilots at its Germanwings unit crashed a plane in the French Alps

March 27, 2015

BERLIN, March 27 (Reuters) - Lufthansa said it will introduce new rules requiring two crew members to be in the cockpit at all times after one of the pilots at its Germanwings unit crashed a plane in the French Alps.

Prosecutors believe Andreas Lubitz, 27, locked himself alone in the cockpit of the Airbus A320 on Tuesday and deliberately steered it into a mountain, killing all 150 people on board.

Lufthansa had said on Thursday that it did not see any reason to hastily change its procedures, but many other airlines swiftly changed their own rules.

"The passenger airlines of the Lufthansa Group will put this new rule into place as soon as possible in agreement with the relevant authorities," Lufthansa said in a statement on Friday.

The Lufthansa Group also includes Germanwings, Austrian Airlines, Swiss Air and Eurowings.

The rule has been agreed by all German airlines, aviation association BDL said in a statement. Air Berlin had announced plans on Thursday to introduce the new procedure.

Scandinavian airline SAS also said on Friday that it had changed procedures to ensure two people are in the cockpit at all times.

Lufthansa also said it was creating a new role of group safety pilot, who will check and develop flight safety procedures and report directly to Chief Executive Carsten Spohr. Currently, each airline has its own safety pilot.

The group safety pilot role will be held by Werner Maas, currently the safety pilot for the Lufthansa brand. (Reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Caroline Copley and Susan Fenton)

Cord-Blood Research Sits Poised for Therapeutic Discovery

Blood is extracted from an umbilical cord. (Blood and Tissue Bank/Flickr)

Whenever one examines any area of scientific inquiry, there are two important things to understand: where the science is today, and where it may lead us in the future. To examine only the former is to engage in half an inquiry and create the perception that things in this particular area have reached a dead end or are in some way, static.

That is the missing piece in a story published by on December 5 entitled because it focused on the present state of therapies alone. “Vast Majority of Life-Saving Cord Blood Sits ” would be a far more apt headline for a proper examination of the opportunities being created by extensive research already ongoing in this promising area of medicine.

It is human nature to be disappointed when scientific progress appears slow, particularly when the goal is saving lives or dramatically improving the quality of life. As a society, we have grown accustomed to the incredible pace of advances in information technology, perhaps leading us to expect the same in areas like medicine when we learn that researchers have mapped the human genome. Sadly, new therapies simply don’t appear with the frequency of new mobile phones.

Indeed, the history of therapeutic research is full of instances where a promising technology is not fully realized until long after an initial discovery. Consider, for example, monoclonal antibodies: The initial discoveries, along with the seminal research by Milstein and Georges Köhler, occurred in the 1970s—more than 20 years before there began to be a significant number of monoclonal antibody therapies approved for human use. Gene therapy had a similar timeline, with two decades elapsing between the initial concept, as proposed by Stanfield Rogers in 1970, and the first approved attempt to use gene therapy to treat a human patient for in 1990.

Blood from an umbilical cord. (Blood and Tissue Bank/Flickr)

There are now many clinical trials exploring strategies for therapies using genetically manipulated for sickle cell disease, beta thalassemia and severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID)—see . Generally it takes 20 to 25 years to realize scientific discoveries. Another area that is presently receiving very significant development and investment is chimeric antigen receptor technology, which arms patients’ own killer T cells with tumor specific antibodies engineered to target transmembrane, signaling and enhancing molecules to rapidly and efficiently destroy lymphoblastic leukemias and other cancers. This work has been in development for more than 20 years.

The science of regenerative medicine is today in the midst of a similar incubation period. While there has been significant progress in research over the last decade, the potential for stem cell therapy based on newborn umbilical cord blood and cord tissue has only begun to emerge.

Research has demonstrated the safety of newborn cord blood stem cell therapies for recovery of hematopoietic function in pediatric disease with autologous and matched or a degree of mismatched transplants. Research is now underway on how newborn stem cells can support effective treatments for a much broader range of conditions—conditions for which there is a significant therapeutic need. Consider just three that have attracted preclinical and early clinical trials:

Cerebral Palsy: The prevalence of cerebral palsy in births in the U.S. ranges from 3.1 to 3.6 per 1,000 annually, according to studies cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Autism: Approximately one in 88 children in the U.S. suffers from autism, according to statistics from the National Institutes of Health.

Type 1 diabetes: Approximately 1.25 million U.S. children and adults have type 1 diabetes according to statistics from the American Diabetes Association.

To identify and develop therapies for these and other serious human health conditions, there is a need to accelerate progress in this area of regenerative medicine by both replacing diseased or damaged cells, and using cell augmentation for intrinsic repair. Numerous academic institutions and some commercial cord blood organizations are now making significant investments toward these potential advancements. (I am connected with some of this work through my past and present affiliations with funding agencies, academia and private organizations like Cord Blood Registry, for which I am presently a scientific advisor.)

In fact, companies such as CBR have supported or directed additional trials that seek to establish regenerative therapies using autologous newborn stem cells that can be an effective approach to treating serious health problems in children and in adults. They include:

An FDA-regulated phase I/II clinical trial conducted by Georgia Regents University to assess whether an infusion of autologous stem cells derived from their own cord blood can . The target for the study is 40 children ranging in age from 1 to 12 years.

A pioneering FDA-regulated phase I/II clinical trial at the University of Texas Health Science Center to compare the safety and effectiveness . The randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study aims to compare the safety and efficacy of an intravenous infusion of autologous cord blood stem cells to bone marrow stem cells. The study launched in November 2013 with a target of 30 children, ranging in age from 2 to 10 years.

With the recent demonstration of hematopoietic stem cell expansion, single cord blood units are being trialed to treat adult patients in life-saving therapies. This means that the stored cord blood samples can be used for family members as well as the child donor. Furthermore, data suggests that use of cord blood cells can be expanded 1,000-fold (or around 200-fold for the CD34+ stem cell population). Hence if these samples were tissue matched () they could be used—with the donor or family consent—for others in need of blood stem cell transplants.

Cord blood being stored. (Blood and Tissue Bank/Flickr)

Imagine a radioactive spill disaster. These cord blood banks could save many lives. In addition, the discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) could mean that these pristine umbilical cord blood and tissue cells could be reprogrammed and used for clinical applications throughout a family’s entire lifetime. Indeed, the enduring storage of cord blood units over 10-, 20- and soon 30-year timeframes will mean there is an incredible resource for the entire community.

Like the breakthroughs of past generations, realizing the potential of newborn stem cells in regenerative medicine will take both time and scientific rigor. Rather than dismiss them based on the state of the science today, we should all be asking how we all could contribute to the future potential of this emerging science.

As the evidence shows, progress in medicine takes time. So while these vital stem cells remain in storage today, the inevitable progress of ongoing research makes them an incredible resource for the near future.

The International Space Station Is a Springboard for Future Mars Exploration

How a one-year orbital mission to the ISS advances a deep-space journey to Mars

March 27, 2015 | |

The Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft is seen after having rolled out by train to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Wednesday, March 25, 2015.

SA Forum

This week NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will launch to the International Space Station (ISS) to begin a yearlong mission onboard the orbital laboratory, where they will conduct research to test how the human body endures a long-duration stay in space. Their mission is part of the work NASA is presently doing on the ISS to develop and test a whole host of long-duration mission capabilities and health-risk mitigations that are moving us forward toward a future Mars mission. Sustained risk reduction research and testing on the ISS provides the most viable and best path to sending astronauts to the Red Planet.

Contrary to the opinion the editors of expressed in their commentary, "," the ISS is the most important laboratory for implementing exploration-enabling research. Furthermore, the NASA risk reduction strategy to protect the health and well-being of astronaut explorers has been vetted by the National Academies. With the launch of the ISS one-year mission, the agency is making an important move to begin extrapolating what we know about ISS six-month missions to the requirements for a journey to Mars and back. The ISS one-year mission fits in our overall risk mitigation strategy in multiple ways.

First, it gives us an initial opportunity to examine in detail the physiological and psychological effects from exposure over a longer mission. Whereas we have a significant evidence base of similar effects during six-month missions for comparison, a yearlong study on the two crew members will expand our ability to plan and execute longer deep-space human voyages with higher probability of success. Because space physiology can be a complicated business, extrapolating ISS one-year human data to a 30-month Mars round-trip will leave us with fewer uncertainties. Furthermore, the unexpected opportunity to compare data from Scott Kelly on the ISS with his identical twin brother on Earth, former astronaut Mark Kelly, will let us explore for the first time how genetic expressions might be altered by long-duration spaceflight. This will provide us with initial insight into the possibility of using emerging personalized precision medicine to address human health exploration risks in a more effective manner.

NASA has extensively studied alternatives to the ISS, such as rotating spacecraft as a potential solution to providing artificial gravity for long-duration space exploration missions. The editors of endorse the rotating spacecraft idea Konstantin Tsiolkovsky studied in 1903 before the dawn of the space age. But Tsiolkovsky clearly did not appreciate the complexity of the human vestibular system and the inherent disorientation and confusion that might be created by the cross-coupled angular accelerations experienced by an individual making head movements in a rotating environment. NASA scientists have been well aware of this potential issue for some time. Whether humans can adapt to the vestibular dysfunction is uncertain and this would need to be resolved, along with the added engineering complexities of such a vehicle, before we could even consider committing to a rotating spacecraft for a deep-space mission. Our experience with ISS six-month missions is that current countermeasures can protect most of the physiological systems (bone, muscle and cardiovascular) from deconditioning in space. Exercise countermeasures are also important to psychological well-being and would be part of any long-duration space mission, with or without artificial gravity, just as it is part of a healthy lifestyle here on Earth. The current cost-benefit analyses do not yet approach the levels needed for adopting rotating spacecraft approaches.

The ISS, via its long-duration human mission capability and research, is already producing the keystone knowledge on systems, technologies and operations necessary to maintain crew members' health and guide a future Mars mission along the most efficient, effective and lowest-risk path.

Offshore Wind Power Grows Up

ESBJERG, Denmark—Flying 56 miles west from this port, you are greeted by a 10-story, yellow, boxlike platform rising out of the North Sea. It is called SylWin1, the connection to Europe's electric grid from one of the largest power plants ever built offshore. Beyond it, arrayed over 27 acres of ocean, are the 80 Siemens 3.6-megawatt turbines of the Dan Tysk wind farm.

For Europeans, and perhaps for some Americans, this may be their energy future. The unobstructed winds at sea here are capable of spinning up enough power to electrify around 1 million German households.

It's an interesting sight to behold, not least because of the technical and engineering prowess required to overcome an often hostile North Sea environment. Yet in five years' time, Dan Tysk might be outdated—if Siemens, MRI-Vestas, Dong Energy and other big corporate players in the offshore wind power industry are to be believed.

Turbines are going to grow bigger, to the 6-to-8-MW range, while the transformers that serve them will shrink, saving on production and installation costs. That's the conclusion of a new study published by Ernst & Young, which finds the European offshore wind market nearing the ability to compete with traditional gas and coal markets if it sheds 26 percent of outlays by 2023.

The report states that the industry can significantly reduce costs over the next five years through a number of key actions. These include deploying larger turbines to increase energy capture (9 percent); fostering competition between industrial players (7 percent); commissioning new projects (7 percent); and tackling challenges in the supply chain such as construction facilities and installation equipment (3 percent).

The industry, differing slightly in its assessment, pushes the date forward by three years. By 2020, a united industry that pools together its knowledge and experience could conceivably hit a price below 10 euro cents per kilowatt-hour, at which point it will have achieved a more competitive footing.

Larger turbines, smaller accessories

"Going forward, you will see the industry can live with a declining subsidy, and then, in the period between 2020 and 2030, we will reach grid parity," predicted Michael Hannibal, head of the offshore unit at Siemens Wind Power.

How the companies get there—together or apart—is an open question, given the intense competition that normally drives the two offshore wind technology leaders, Siemens and MRI-Vestas. Both pledged their fealty to the effort through a joint declaration that outlined a list of five cost-cutting measures to be taken up by suppliers across the value chain. Whatever the outcome, one thing that's for certain is that most of the innovation will take place in Denmark, where today's leading companies all reside.

Before flying out to Dan Tysk, reporters visited Siemens' pre-assembly site at the port of Esbjerg on Denmark's north coast. Companies representing at least 80 percent of the Danish wind energy consortium are clustered within 190 miles of the port. They include shipping companies, operations and maintenance service firms, and marine construction experts.

Last year, Siemens, the world leader in offshore wind, shipped more than 300 turbines at this facility. Components like towers and hubs were pre-assembled to prepare them for installation with jack-up vessels.

"That involves no production," said a Siemens employee who took reporters on a tour of the assembly area.

Siemens has an order backlog of more than 1,100 wind turbines, with four projects sitting on the dock awaiting transport to wind farms in Germany and the United Kingdom.

All will be loaded in a highly prefabricated process, with nacelles, for example, coming with their hub and drivetrain already in place. Three-piece towers are fit together by crane and loaded onto the vessel in an upright position, while the blades are hoisted onboard in a single lift. This kind of modular assembly is now standard in the industry. Siemens wants to take it one step further in terms of service and maintenance, so parts can be snapped in and out in their entirety while out at sea, thus cutting down on repair times.

Winning a war against cost

In the future, crews will sleep onboard so-called Service Operational Vessels equipped with hydraulic cylinders, which will rise from the deck, enabling technicians to walk to the nacelles, or hubs of the turbines, via gangways. It's much safer and faster than crawling up and down windblown ladders over the heaving sea.

Yet if there is any one game-changer on the list, analysts say it lies in Siemens' new alternating-current grid access solution, which, in the case of Dan Tysk, would replace two large intermediary substations with lighter versions situated between the wind farm and the SylWin1 high-voltage direct-current platform.

Suitable for all wind power turbine models, in some cases the new device would be small enough to be installed like a balcony between the foundation and turbine shaft. A third smaller in size compared with a conventional platform, estimates and costs will be reduced by up to 40 percent.

"Size is cost," explained Tim Dawidowsky, head of transmission solutions at Siemens Energy. "But for turbines, while they get bigger and bigger, we on the transmission side are going smaller and smaller and smaller."

As for changes to the Washington, D.C., platform, Dawidowsky first reminded media members on a tour of the wind farm of what had been accomplished in the preceding six months with the connection of four HVDC grid platforms for TenneT in the North Sea. Altogether, the grid connections will supply electricity from offshore wind power for about 3 million German households.

"There was a lot of doubt this would be the right technology," Dawidowsky said. "I highly recommend to stay tuned as we launch something in the coming months which will also help reduce costs on the D.C. side."

www.eenews.net

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Fan-mail Friday

Over the summer, I decided it would be fun to look back through all the mail kids sent me during the 2014-2015 school year. I've picked out some of my favorites and will be posting one every Friday. They truly are inspiring.

The Ebola Outbreak: Past, Present and Future

’s Dina Maron talks with Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general for health security at the World Health Organization, about the current Ebola outbreak, the threat of sexual transmission and the hope for a vaccine. They were both at an Institute of Medicine Forum on Microbial Threats held at the Pan American Health Organization in Washington, concentrating on Ebola in West Africa.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

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Thursday, March 26, 2015