Science Updates

[Rorschach]

The vision sees construction being carried out by a number of robots on the moon's surface supported by a team of astronauts.

I'd expect global cooperation...

[Chard]

The vision sees construction being carried out by a number of robots on the moon's surface supported by a team of astronauts.

I'd expect global cooperation...

Doesn't matter. As a civilization we simply do not have the means to do this. That's what I was talking about the Type One vs Type 2 civilization point.

[Rorschach]

Well obviously more visionary people than you think we can.

[Chard]

Well obviously more visionary people than you think we can.

Sure we can, in something like a century or so, providing we don't manage to obliterate ourselves before then. At this point, though, we simply do not have the energy production, propulsion systems, or any of a hundred technologies that would be required for this project.

Never mind all that though, no one has the budget for it either. You could take the entire global GDP for the next decade and you still wouldn't have enough money to get this project fully funded, it's just that big.

[Super Nova]

Never mind all that though, no one has the budget for it either. You could take the entire global GDP for the next decade and you still wouldn't have enough money to get this project fully funded, it's just that big.

If humanity took more risks like the good old days, we could do it cheaper. There are a few billion of us now so if we value life more cheaply we could get on with it.

[Chard]

Never mind all that though, no one has the budget for it either. You could take the entire global GDP for the next decade and you still wouldn't have enough money to get this project fully funded, it's just that big.

If humanity took more risks like the good old days, we could do it cheaper. There are a few billion of us now so if we value life more cheaply we could get on with it.

Actually, it would require the reverse. We need to value humans more and do so by investing in them. In order to pull off a task of that magnitude we'd need shitloads of scientists, engineers, skilled tradesmen, and solid management. Having a shitload of people doesn't help nearly as much as a shitload of intelligent people would. In fact, past a certain point adding more people to the effort would start to yield diminishing returns and eventually actually hamper efforts.

[Rorschach]

'Biopen' offers hope to recreate bone in patients
* by: Grant McArthur
* From: Herald Sun
* 3 hours ago December 04, 2013 8:30PM

SURGEONS may be on the path to "drawing" new bone in patients following a world-first Melbourne medical breakthrough.

A "biopen" containing stem cells and growth factors, to repair damaged and diseased bone, is being developed by Melbourne's St Vincent's Hospital and the University of Wollongong.

It could be ready for trials in human patients within five years.

The device works in a similar way to 3D printing methods to develop new tissue, combining cells mixed in a seaweed extract and coated in a protective gel.

Two layers of material combine in the head of the biopen as a surgeon uses it to "fill in" a damaged section of bone in a patient.

An ultraviolet light fixed to the device dries the mixture as it is dispensed, allowing it to be built up in layers, thus constructing a 3D scaffold of new bone.

The university's Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science has handed the invention over to St Vincent's Hospital, where Professor Peter Choong will continue developing the cell material for use in clinical trials.

Prof Choong said the biopen would allow surgeons to adjust reconstructive surgery for trauma and cancer patients.

"The biopen allows the surgeon to fill that gap, to sculpt that and personalise the reconstruction to the dimensions of the patient in real time," Prof Choong said.

"In the long term, we hope to use the biopen to actually print out material that helps create the bone with cells in it ... which is a very novel concept.

"This provides a new way we can look at reconstructing patients, and how we can reconstruct them in a way that preserves as much of their own tissue as we can and bring them back to normality as closely as we can."

It has already been demonstrated that the "ink" can regrow cartilage in animals, when used in a scaffold produced by a 3D printer.

ACES director Professor Gordon Wallace said the breakthrough had been possible only through the close collaboration between the Wollongong and Melbourne centres

"This will take it to a whole new level," Prof Wallace said.

grant.mcarthur@news.com.au

[Super Nova]

A "biopen" containing stem cells and growth factors, to repair damaged and diseased bone, is being developed by Melbourne's St Vincent's Hospital and the University of Wollongong.

It could be ready for trials in human patients within five years.

The device works in a similar way to 3D printing methods to develop new tissue, combining cells mixed in a seaweed extract and coated in a protective gel.

Two layers of material combine in the head of the biopen as a surgeon uses it to "fill in" a damaged section of bone in a patient.

An ultraviolet light fixed to the device dries the mixture as it is dispensed, allowing it to be built up in layers, thus constructing a 3D scaffold of new bone.

Rs,

that is just brilliant. 3d printing has a big future for this type of replacement technology. Soon we will be able to replace all body parts. How about in 100 years we will we bale to replace 90% of the body except the brain.

[Super Nova]

I thought they had already proved this however now the evidence is really in.



NASA Mars rover finds evidence of life-friendly ancient lake
By Irene Klotz
SAN FRANCISCO Mon Dec 9, 2013 4:31pm EST

(Reuters) - Scientists have found evidence of an ancient freshwater lake on Mars well suited to support microbial life, the researchers said Monday.

The lake, located inside Gale Crater where the rover landed in August 2012, likely covered an area 31 miles long and 3 miles wide, though its size varied over time.

Analysis of sedimentary deposits gathered by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the lake existed for at least tens of thousands of years, and possibly longer, geologist John Grotzinger, with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, told reporters at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.

"We've come to appreciate that is a habitable system of environments that includes the lake, the associated streams and, at times when the lake was dry, the groundwater," he said.

Analysis of clays drilled out from two rock samples in the area known as Yellowknife Bay show the freshwater lake existed at a time when other parts of Mars were dried up or dotted with shallow, acidic, salty pools ill-suited for life.

In contrast, the lake in Gale Crater could have supported a simple class of rock-eating microbes, known as chemolithoautotrophs, which on Earth are commonly found in caves and hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, Grotzinger said.

Scientists also reported that the clays, which form in the presence of water, were younger than expected, a finding that expands the window of time for when Mars may have been suited for life.

Previous studies from Mars orbiters, landers and rovers have provided increasing evidence for a warmer, wetter, more Earth-like Mars in the planet's past. Ancient rocks bear telltale chemical fingerprints of past interactions with water.

The planet's surface is riddled with geologic features carved by water, such as channels, dried up riverbeds, lake deltas and other sedimentary deposits.

New related studies on how much radiation blasts the planet set new boundaries for how long any organic carbon, which so far has not been found on Mars, could have been preserved inside rocks within about 2 inches of the surface, the depth of Curiosity's drill.

But finding rock samples with relatively short exposure times should not be a problem. An age-dating technique, used for the first time on Mars, reveals that winds are sand-blasting away the rock faces at Gale Crater.

One of the mudstones at Yellowknife Bay, for example, has been exposed to the destructive effects of cosmic rays for only about 70 million years, well within the period of time to detect organics, said Don Hassler with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

The Yellowknife Bay samples also showed hints of possible organics that may have been destroyed in the rover's laboratory oven due to highly oxidizing chemicals known as perchlorates, which so far seem to be ubiquitous in the Martian soil.

Scientists will continue to look for rocks that may have higher concentrations of organics or better chemical conditions for their preservation, Grotzinger said.

"A key hurdle that we need to overcome is understanding how those organics may have been preserved over time, from the time they entered the rock to the time that we actually detect them," said Curiosity scientist Jennifer Eigenbrode with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Curiosity currently is en route to a three-mile high mound of layered rock rising form the floor of Gale Crater, a formation known as Mount Sharp.

Based on the new information gleaned from the Yellowknife Bay samples, scientists are developing a new strategy to look for organics there.

Even if life never started on Mars, organic material presumably would have been deposited on the surface by crashing comets and asteroids

[Super Nova]

This is not a good sign for the US.

I remember walking around Sydney jumping on thousands of the bastards. I have not seen this in New York. Look out New York.... the roach are coming...

Maybe we should reconsider our western distaste to this form of protein

'Super' cockroach that can survive freezing temperatures spotted for the first time in the US

A species of cockroach that can withstand extreme temperatures has been spotted for the first time in the United States.



An extra tough species of cockroach has been identified in Manhattan - the first time it has been found in the United States.

Typically New York's cockroaches can only survive in warm conditions but the new Asian species can survive outside in freezing conditions.

The species was first spotted in New York's linear park, the High Line by an exterminator.

The Periplaneta japonica is well documented in Asia but was confirmed in the United States by biologists at Rutgers University.

It is not certain how it arrived in the country but it is thought that imported soil may have contained the cockroaches.

Jessica Ware, a biologist at Rutgers University, said: “Many nurseries in the United States have some native plants and some imported plants". She added:“so it's not a far stretch to picture that that is the source."

The biologists say that it is too early to say what the implications are of the new species.

Ware said that there may well be cockroach sightings in the midst of winter: "I could imagine japonica being outside and walking around, though I don’t know how well it would do in dirty New York snow. The Asian researchers tested driven snow.”

There, however, little likelihood that the different species could interbreed and create a hybrid super-roach because their genitalia don’t match.

Biologist Dominic Evangelista said: “The male and female genitalia fit together like a lock and key and that differs by species. So we assume that one won’t fit the other.”

However according to Evangelista the different species of cockroaches will still compete. He said: "Because this species is very similar to cockroach species that already exist in the urban environment, they likely will compete with each other for space and for food.”

“Their combined numbers inside buildings could actually fall because more time and energy spent competing means less time and energy to devote to reproduction."

Michael Scharf, a professor of urban entomology at Purdue University, warned that the new discovery is still something that should be monitored.

"To be truly invasive, a species has to move in and take over and out-compete a native species," he said. "There's no evidence of that, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about it."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... he-US.html