The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has successfully entered orbit around the moon. Engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., confirmed the spacecraft’s lunar orbit insertion at 6:27 a.m. EDT July23,2009-Tuesday.

During transit to the moon, engineers performed a mid-course correction to get the spacecraft in the proper position to reach its lunar destination. Since the moon is always moving, the spacecraft shot for a target point ahead of the moon. When close to the moon, LRO used its rocket motor to slow down until the gravity of the moon caught the spacecraft in lunar orbit. This is indeed a challenging task to them. “Lunar orbit insertion is a crucial milestone for the mission,” said Cathy Peddie, LRO deputy project manager at Goddard. “The LRO mission cannot begin until the moon captures us. Once we enter the moon’s orbit, we can begin to build up the data set needed to understand in greater detail the lunar topography, features and resources. We are so proud to be a part of this exciting mission and NASA’s planned return to the moon.”

A series of four engine burns over the next four days will put the satellite into its commissioning phase orbit. During the commissioning phase each of its seven instruments is checked out and brought online. The commissioning phase will end approximately 60 days after launch, when LRO will use its engines to transition to its primary mission orbit. For its primary mission, LRO will orbit above the moon at about 31 miles, or 50 kilometers, for one year. The spacecraft’s instruments will help scientists compile high resolution, three-dimensional maps of the lunar surface and also survey it at many spectral wavelengths. The LRO satellite will explore the moon’s deepest craters, examining permanently sunlit and shadowed regions, and provide understanding of the effects of lunar radiation on humans. LRO will return more data about the moon than any previous mission.

The spacecraft’s instruments will help scientists compile high resolution, three-dimensional maps of the lunar surface and also survey it at many spectral wavelengths. LRO is leading NASA’s way back to the moon. The main goal of LRO is to conduct investigations that prepare for future lunar exploration. They will scout for safe and compelling landing sites, locate potential resource and characterize the effects of prolonged exposure to the lunar radiation environment. They will also return rich scientific data that will help us to better understand the moon’s topography and composition. Thanks to LRO.

The ability to learn and to establish new memories is essential to our daily existence and identity; enabling us to navigate through the world. The researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, McGill University and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has captured the first image mechanism, specifically protein translation, which underlies long-term memory formation. This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the WM Keck Foundation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

The image on the right shows that the increase in green fluorescence represents the imaging of local translation at synapses during long-term synaptic plasticity.

The finding provides the first visual evidence that when a new memory is formed new proteins are made locally at the synapse - the connection between nerve cells - increasing the strength of the synaptic connection and reinforcing the memory. The study published in Science, is important for understanding how memory traces are created and the ability to monitor it in real time will allow a detailed understanding of how memories are formed. When considering what might be going on in the brain at a molecular level two essential properties of memory need to be taken into account.

• Because a lot of information needs to be maintained over a long time there has to be some degree of stability.
• To allow for learning and adaptation the system also needs to be highly flexible.

For this reason, research has focused on synapses which are the main site of exchange and storage in the brain. They form a vast but also constantly fluctuating network of connections whose ability to change and adapt, called synaptic plasticity, may be the fundamental basis of learning and memory. “But, if this network is constantly changing, the question is how do memories stay put, how are they formed? It has been known for some time that an important step in long-term memory formation is “translation”, or the production, of new proteins locally at the synapse, strengthening the synaptic connection in the reinforcement of a memory, which until now has never been imaged,” says Dr. Wayne Sossin, neuroscientist at The Neuro and co-investigator in the study. “Using a translational reporter, a fluorescent protein that can be easily detected and tracked, we directly visualized the increased local translation, or protein synthesis, during memory formation. Importantly, this translation was synapse-specific and it required activation of the post-synaptic cell, showing that this step required cooperation between the pre and post-synaptic compartments, the parts of the two neurons that meet at the synapse. Thus highly regulated local translation occurs at synapses during long-term plasticity and requires trans-synaptic signals.”

Long-term memory and synaptic plasticity require changes in gene expression and yet can occur in a synapse-specific manner. This study provides evidence that a mechanism that mediates this gene expression during neuronal plasticity involves regulated translation of localized mRNA at stimulated synapses. These findings are instrumental in establishing the molecular processes involved in long-term memory formation and provide insight into diseases involving memory impairment.

European researchers have collaborated to develop artificial skin for robots. This is part of a project involving researchers at the University of Hertfordshire so that it can be used in their work investigating how robots can help children with autism to learn about social interaction. This is the first time that this approach has been applied in work with autistic children.

Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn and her team at the University’s School of Computer Science are part of a European consortium, which is working on the three-year Roboskin project to develop a robot with skin and embedded tactile sensors. The researchers will work on Kaspar, a child-sized humanoid robot developed by the Adaptive Systems research group at the University. The robot is currently being used by Dr. Ben Robins and his colleagues to encourage social interaction skills in children with autism. They will cover Kaspar with robotic skin and Dr Daniel Polani will develop new sensor technologies which can provide tactile feedback from areas of the robot’s body. The goal is to make the robot able to respond to different styles of how the children play with Kaspar in order to help the children to develop ‘socially appropriate’ playful interaction (e.g. not too aggressive) when interacting with the robot and other people.

Autism causes kids to experience the world differently from the way most other kids do. It’s hard for kids with autism to talk with other people and express themselves using words. Kids who have autism usually keep to themselves and many can’t communicate without special help. “Children with autism have problems with touch, often with either touching or being touched,” said Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn. “The idea is to put skin on the robot as touch is a very important part of social development and communication and the tactile sensors will allow the robot to detect different types of touch and it can then encourage or discourage different approaches.” Roboskin is being co-ordinated by Professor Giorgio Cannata of Università di Genova (Italy). Other partners in the consortium are: Università di Genova, Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne, Italian Institute of Technology, University of Wales at Newport and Università di Cagliari.

The next generation of instruments for ground-based telescopes took a leap forward with the development of a new ultra-fast camera that can take 1500 finely exposed images per second even when observing extremely faint objects. The first 240×240 pixel images with the world’s fastest high precision faint light camera were obtained through a collaborative effort between ESO and three French laboratories from the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers (CNRS/INSU). Cameras such as this are key components of the next generation of adaptive optics instruments of Europe’s ground-based astronomy flagship facility, the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT).

“The performance of this breakthrough camera is without an equivalent anywhere in the world. The camera will enable great leaps forward in many areas of the study of the Universe,” says Norbert Hubin, head of the Adaptive Optics department at ESO. OCam will be part of the second-generation VLT instrument SPHERE. To be installed in 2011, SPHERE will take images of giant exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. A fast camera such as this is needed as an essential component for the modern adaptive optics instruments used on the largest ground-based telescopes. Telescopes on the ground suffer from the blurring effect induced by atmospheric turbulence. This turbulence causes the stars to twinkle in a way that delights poets, but frustrates astronomers, since it blurs the finest details of the images. Adaptive optics techniques overcome this major drawback, so that ground-based telescopes can produce images that are as sharp as if taken from space. Adaptive optics is based on real-time corrections computed from images obtained by a special camera working at very high speeds. Nowadays, this means many hundreds of times each second. The new generation instruments require these corrections to be done at an even higher rate, more than one thousand times a second, and this is where OCam is essential.

“The quality of the adaptive optics correction strongly depends on the speed of the camera and on its sensitivity,” says Philippe Feautrier from the LAOG, France, who coordinated the whole project. “But these are a priori contradictory requirements, as in general the faster a camera is, the less sensitive it is.” This is why cameras normally used for very high frame-rate movies require extremely powerful illumination, which is of course not an option for astronomical cameras. OCam and its CCD220 detector, developed by the British manufacturer e2v technologies, solve this dilemma, by being not only the fastest available, but also very sensitive, making a significant jump in performance for such cameras. Because of imperfect operation of any physical electronic devices, a CCD camera suffers from so-called readout noise. OCam has a readout noise ten times smaller than the detectors currently used on the VLT, making it much more sensitive and able to take pictures of the faintest of sources. With this technology all the generation instruments of ESO’s Large Telescope will be able to produce the best possible image with an unequaled sharpness.

“Plans are now underway to develop the adaptive optics detectors required for ESO’s planned 42-metre European Extremely Large Telescope, together with our research partners and the industry,” says Hubin. Using sensitive detectors developed in the UK, with a control system developed in France, with German and Spanish participation, OCam is truly an outcome of a European collaboration that will be widely used and commercially produced.

Scientists at the University of Granada’s Department of Optics have designed a new optical technique to differentiate between original and “bootleg” compact discs (CDs) and DVDs by using light diffraction. This indeed good since this is economical, fast and effective, and it also allows to detect illegal CD copies. Optical CDs are at present the most extended physical means of distribution of digital information around the world and illegal copying is a serious problem that involves important econimic losses that is not solve up to now. One of the biggest problems with CDs was the rate at which people were burning them. Back in the day one could buy an album and then burn ten copies for their family and friends. 11 people get the CD and the record companies only got the profit for one purchase.

Original CDs are made by printing, through a process which is profitable for large print runs. However, copies are obtained by performing a series of marks on the surface through the “burning” with laser of commercial recorders on an organic material with which a series of spiral grooves are made in a blank CD. Through the new technique proposed by the scientists of the Department of Optics of the UGR it is possible to identify if a CD has been recorded using a method or a device different to those used in industrial processes, which allows to differentiate between original CDs and copies. It uses the phenomenon of light diffraction on a CD surface to appreciate the differences between original and bootleg CDs, as they generate different types of diffraction models.

This technique has also been tested in DVDs, where it has also been validated, and they intend to develop it for the detection of bootleg CDs for latest generation devices susch as Blue-Ray or HD-DVD.The study has been recently published in the renowned international scientific journal “American Journal of Physics”, and the respective patent has already been requested. The Group in charge of this research work is composed of members of the Department of Optics of the University of Granada (Javier Hernández Andrés, Eva Valero Benito, Juan Luis Nieves Gómez and Javier Romero Mora), and by José Fernández Dorado, a student of Physics who is now carrying out his doctoral thesis in the Centre for the Development of Sensors, Instrumentation and Systems of the Technical University of Catalonia.

A new analysis of the current swine-origin H1N1 influenza A virus suggests that transmission to humans occurred several months before recognition of the existing outbreak.

‘Using computational methods, developed over the last ten years at Oxford, we were able to reconstruct the origins and timescale of this new pandemic,’ said Dr Oliver Pybus of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology. ‘Our results show that this strain has been circulating among pigs, possibly among multiple continents, for many years prior to its transmission to humans.’ Dr Pybus, along with Andrew Rambaut from the University of Edinburgh and colleagues, used evolutionary analysis to estimate the timescale of the origins and the early development of the epidemic. They believe that it was derived from several viruses circulating in swine, and that the initial transmission to humans occurred several months before recognition of the outbreak. The team conclude that ‘despite widespread influenza surveillance in humans, the lack of systematic swine surveillance allowed for the undetected persistence and evolution of this potentially pandemic strain for many years.’

Their is indeed a need for systematic surveillance of influenza in swine for it was being noted that new genetic elements in swine can result in the emergence of viruses with pandemic potential in humans. Transmission of swine influenza virus from pigs to humans is not common and does not always cause human influenza, often only resulting in the production of antibodies in the blood. The meat of the animal poses no risk of transmitting the virus when properly cooked. If transmission does cause human influenza, it is called zoonotic swine flu. People who work with pigs, especially people with intense exposures, are at increased risk of catching swine flu. In the mid-20th century, identification of influenza subtypes became possible, which allows accurate diagnosis of transmission to humans. Since then, fifty confirmed transmissions have been recorded, Rarely, these strains of swine flu can pass from human to human. In humans, the symptoms of swine flu are similar to those of influenza and of influenza-like illness in general, namely chills, fever, sore throat, muscle pains, severe headache, coughing, weakness and general discomfort. It was first proposed to be a disease related to human influenza during the 1918 flu pandemic, when pigs became sick at the same time as humans. This H1N1 form of swine flu is one of the descendants of the strain that caused the 1918 flu pandemic. As well as persisting in pigs, the descendants of the 1918 virus have also circulated in humans through the 20th century, contributing to the normal seasonal epidemics of influenza.

Throughout history, military medical personnel have been involved in providing care for their comrades in arms, often at the expense of their own lives. Researchers in the US are working on a project that could replace army medics on a battlefield with robotic surgeons and nurses.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon research arm who turns science fiction fantasy into military reality. DARPA conducts high-risk military research and in the process develops amazing medical technology. At their 3-day DARPA tech conference, they announced the upcoming deployment of the first portable, self-contained, remote battlefield medic/surgeon Trauma Pod robotic system by 2009. Surgical robotics was initially conceived by DARPA as remote battlefront or space surgical robots and this technology is now widely available in the DaVinci surgical robots. Brett Giroir, director of the research agency’s Defense Sciences Office also announced that the system, called Trauma Pod, has successfully “treated” a mannequin during a test, with no complications.
Brendan Visser, a surgeon at Stanford University in California who helped develop the Trauma Pod, described it as: “Three separate robots dance over the top of the patient with their powerful arms moving very quickly, yet they don’t crash and they’re able to deliver very small items from one arm to another.” The purpose of the Trauma Pod is to provide a quick “temporary fix” to wounded soldiers before being taken to the hospital. A single human will operate the robot remotely during surgery, but Trauma Pod will be able to perform a number of functions, such as fluid administration and surgical assistance, autonomously. The goal is to stabilize injured soldiers as quickly as possible and previous Trauma Pod designs have included related systems that evacuate the patient. It could provide airway control, relieve life-threatening injuries such as a collapsed lung, or stop bleeding temporarily.
The unit comprises one three-armed surgeon robot, assisted by 12 other robotic systems. Remotely controlled by a human, the surgeon robot communicates with and instructs the other robots. One of its three arms holds an endoscope to allow the human controller to see inside the patient, while the other two grip surgical tools. The robot also could be allowed to carry out some simple tasks without human help, such as placing stitches or tying knots. The bed itself monitors vital signs, administers fluids and oxygen, and may eventually administer anesthesia. A voice-activated robotic arm “Hot Lips” - M*A*S*H - passes fresh tools and supplies to the surgeon robot. A third “circulating nurse” robot gives out the right tools. Getting the patient off the battlefield and into a hospital is another matter. While the Pod is supposed to eventually meet certain size and weight restrictions, there are no plans yet to incorporate specific vehicles. The Trauma Pod is expected to be used by the Army initially, with possible, full-production deployment happening between 2011 and 2013.

Electronic memory chips that bend and twist could soon power medical implants as a result of work by engineers at NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). The work is detailed on the July 2009 issue of IEEE Electron Device Letters. The engineers have found a way to build a flexible memory component out of inexpensive, readily available materials.

The new device is promising not only to its applications in medicine and other fields, but it also appears to possess the characteristics of a memristor (a fundamentally new component for electronic circuits that industry scientists developed in 2008) though they are not yet ready for the marketplace. NIST has filed for a patent on the flexible memory device. Electronic components that can flex without breaking are coveted by portable device manufacturers for many reasons - not just because people have a tendency to drop their mp3 players. For example, small medical sensors that can be worn on the skin to monitor vital signs such as heart rate or blood sugar could benefit patients with conditions that require constant maintenance. According to NIST researchers, though some flexible components exist, creating flexible memory has been a technical barrier.

The researchers took polymer sheets - the sort that transparencies for overhead projectors are made from - and experimented with depositing a thin film of titanium dioxide, an ingredient in sunscreen, on their surfaces. Instead of using expensive equipment to deposit the titanium dioxide as is traditionally done, the material was deposited by a sol gel process, which consists of spinning the material in liquid form and letting it set, like making gelatin. By adding electrical contacts, the team created a flexible memory switch that operates on less than 10 volts, maintains its memory when power is lost, and still functions after being flexed more than 4,000 times. The switch’s performance bears a strong resemblance to that of a memristor, a component theorised in 1971 as a fourth fundamental circuit element (along with the capacitor, resistor and inductor). A memristor is a resistor that changes its resistance depending on the amount of current that is sent through it - and retains this resistance even after the power is turned off. Industrial scientists had created this memristor the previous year and the NIST component demonstrates the same electrical behaviour but is also flexible. The NIST begin to explore the metrology that may be necessary in studying the device’s unique electrical behaviour.

A new technique creates all-purpose antibodies that can be activated at a moment’s notice. A contagious disease that is attacking today is the swine flu- H1N1 and that is why influenza flu pandemic preparation is very important! You can have an immunization with the flu vaccine, can have the flu shot that are good before you are showing flu symptoms, although the current trivalent influenza vaccine is unlikely to provide protection against the new 2009 H1N1 strain, they are currently being developed.

Vaccines can take weeks or months to generate the antibodies that eventually protect us. Scripps Research Institute biologist Carlos Barbas and his colleagues have proposed a shortcut. First, give a conventional vaccine—one that gives you an ongoing supply of generic antibodies. Then, whenever you’re exposed to a new threat, add designer molecules that instantly stick to those antibodies and direct them toward chosen targets. Immunization/ vaccination is a great public health success story. Today, diseases that once routinely killed or permanently disabled people, like measles, polio, and diphtheria, are now nearly unheard of in industrialized countries. Immunizations even led to the total extinction of deadly smallpox. Most of the time, immunizations aren’t working against a ticking clock. You get immunized as a baby or young child, and the antibodies you develop protect for the rest of your life. However, it takes at least a week or two or even over a period of months or years in some cases for the body to mount a full immune response to the vaccine. If you were exposed to the actual germs during this window of time, you could still develop the disease. This rarely happens with childhood immunizations, since decades of immunizations have made these disease-causing germs scarce.

There are other cases in which an instant vaccine would come in handy: against a rare pandemic like swine flu, for example, or a bioterror attack that uses a never-before-seen mutant virus. Rather than try to force the body to make antibodies much faster than usual—a very challenging, perhaps impossible task—Barbas and his colleagues decided on a different strategy. They triggered an immune response in mice that created generic antibodies with a special property using a chemical drug: a spot where they tend to bind to a sticky molecule, called a “linker.” These linker molecules can be manufactured in a lab, and outfitted with additional molecules that recognize and stick to disease-causing targets, like cancer cells. When they injected the mice with cancer-seeking linker molecules, the generic antibodies grabbed them up, and transformed instantly into anti-cancer antibodies.

If this were to work in humans, then whenever you needed protection against an immediate threat, you could get a similar injection, or even swallow a pill, that would give you temporary immunity. (After a while, the targeted antibodies would clear from your system, and your body would make new, generic antibodies that could be used against something else.) It’s a long way off, but it’s a tantalizing idea—one that could give peoples the potential to fight off any illness, without having to get thousands of vaccinations “just in case.” This is a great discovery against any diseases that might come in your/our body.

The Moon has fascinated mankind throughout the ages. One can discern two major types of terrain: relatively bright highlands and darker plains by simply viewing through the naked eye. By the middle of the 17th century, Galileo and other early astronomers made telescopic observations, noting an almost endless overlapping of craters. It has also been known for more than a century that the Moon is less dense than the Earth. Current knowledge of the Moon is greater than for any other solar system object except Earth. This lends to a greater understanding of geologic processes and further appreciation of the complexity of terrestrial planets. Neil Armstrong(July 20, 1969), became the first man to step onto the surface of the Moon. It was being followed by Edwin Aldrin - both of the Apollo 11 mission. They and other moon walkers experienced the effects of no atmosphere. Radio communications were used because sound waves can only be heard by travelling through the medium of air. The lunar sky is always black because diffraction of light requires an atmosphere. The astronauts also experienced gravitational differences. The moon’s gravity is one-sixth that of the Earth’s; a man who weighs 180 lbf (pound-force) on Earth weighs only 30 lbf on the Moon. (The equivalent metric weight (or force) is the Newton, where 4.45 Newtons equal one pound-force.)

• Moon distant from the earth = 384,403 kilometers (238,857 miles)
• diameter = 3,476 kilometers (2,160 miles)
• Both rotation and its revolution around Earth takes 27 days, 7 hours, and 43 minutes

This synchronous rotation is caused by an unsymmetrical distribution of mass in the Moon, which has allowed Earth’s gravity to keep one lunar hemisphere permanently turned toward Earth. Very small but real librations (maximum about 0°.04) are caused by the effect of the Sun’s gravity and the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit, perturbing the Moon’s orbit and allowing cyclical preponderances of torque in both east-west and north-south directions.

Moon Statistics

Mass (kg) =========================================== 7.349e+22
Mass (Earth = 1) ====================================== 1.2298e-02
Equatorial radius (km) ================================== 1,737.4
Equatorial radius (Earth = 1) ============================= 2.7241e-01
Mean density (gm/cm^3) =============================== 3.34
Mean distance from Earth (km) =========================== 384,400
Rotational period (days) ================================ 27.32166
Orbital period (days) =================================== 27.32166
Average length of lunar day (days) ======================== 29.53059
Mean orbital velocity (km/sec) ============================ 1.03
Orbital eccentricity ==================================== 0.0549
Tilt of axis (degrees) =================================== 1.5424
Orbital inclination (degrees) ============================== 5.1454
Equatorial surface gravity (m/sec^2) ======================= 1.62
Equatorial escape velocity (km/sec) ======================== 2.38
Visual geometric albedo ================================= 0.12
Magnitude (Vo) ======================================= -12.74
Mean surface temperature (day) =========================== 107°C
Mean surface temperature (night) ========================= -153°C
Maximum surface temperature ============================ 123°C
Minimum surface temperature ============================= -233°C