New Study Brings a Doubted Exoplanet 'Back from
the Dead'

post from Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News on 25 October 2012 08:16:40 PM. © Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News

Greenbelt, MD (SPX) Oct 26, 2012
A second look at data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is reanimating the claim that the nearby star Fomalhaut hosts a massive exoplanet. The study suggests that the planet, named Fomalhaut b, is a rare and possibly unique object that is completely shrouded by dust. Fomalhaut is the brightest star in the constellation Piscis Austrinus and lies 25 light-years away. In November 200

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the_Dead_999.html

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NASA's LADEE Spacecraft Gets Final Science
Instrument Installed

post from Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News on 25 October 2012 08:16:40 PM. © Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News

Moffett Field, CA (SPX) Oct 26, 2012
Engineers at NASAs Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., have installed the third and final science instrument that will fly onboard NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE). LADEE is a robotic mission that will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about the lunar atmosphere, conditions near the surface and environmental influences on lunar dust.

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ment_Installed_999.html

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First Space Launch System 'Pathfinder' Hardware
Nearing Completion

post from Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News on 25 October 2012 08:16:40 PM. © Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News

Huntsville AL (SPX) Oct 26, 2012
Engineers using a state-of-the-art vertical welding tool at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., move a "pathfinder" version of the adapter design that will be used on test flights of the Orion spacecraft and NASA's Space Launch System. The adapter will eventually connect the Orion spacecraft to the SLS. It will be flight tested on Exploration Flight Test-1 in 2014, w

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_Nearing_Completion_999.html

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Curious About Life: Interview with Felipe Gomez

post from Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News on 25 October 2012 08:16:40 PM. © Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News

Moffett Field CA (SPX) Oct 26, 2012
The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover has 10 science instruments, and each will be used in the coming weeks and months to help characterize the environment of Mars and determine if the planet ever had the potential for life. Provided by the Spanish government, the Rover Environmental Monitoring System (REMS) will monitor the daily weather on Mars to help determine habitability at the

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999.html

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Assessing Drop-Off to Mars Rover's Observation
Tray

post from Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News on 25 October 2012 08:16:40 PM. © Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News

Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 26, 2012
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity used its Mast Camera (Mastcam) during the mission's 78th sol (Oct. 24, 2012) to view soil material on the rover's observation tray. The observations will help assess movement of the sample on the tray in response to vibrations from sample-delivery and sample-processing activities of mechanisms on the rover's arm. Curiosity is working with material from the

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ay_999.html

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Medical Studies Showing Largest Benefits Often
Prove to be False

post from Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog on 25 October 2012 08:16:14 PM. © Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog

There is another study showing the results of health studies often are proven false. Medical studies with striking results often prove false

If a medical study seems too good to be true, it probably is, according to a new analysis.

In a statistical analysis of nearly 230,000 trials compiled from a variety of disciplines, study results that claimed a “very large effect” rarely held up when other research teams tried to replicate them.
…
The report should remind patients, physicians and policymakers not to give too much credence to small, early studies that show huge treatment effects, Ioannidis said.

The Stanford professor chose to publish this paper in a closed science publication. But previously he published openly on: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.

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benefits-often-prove-to-be-false/

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NCBI ROFL: Womens adult romantic attachment style
and communication by cell phone with romantic partners.

post from Discoblog » NCBI ROFL on 25 October 2012 07:00:37 PM. © Discoblog » NCBI ROFL

“Cell phones have become important communication media for individuals in romantic relationships. The frequency of and methods used for communication may vary by adults’ style of romantic attachment. Female university students (N = 31) currently in romantic relationships responded to a questionnaire. They estimated the frequency of calls and text messages received from and made to their romantic partners and completed the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised instrument, a measure of attachment anxiety and avoidance. Also, the participants reviewed their cell phones’ memories and provided accurate frequency of communication to and from the romantic partner. Attachment anxiety was associated with more estimated text messages sent to and received from the romantic partners and actual text messages sent to and received from the romantic partners. Attachment avoidance was associated (r = -.38) with fewer estimated calls made to the romantic partners and fewer actual calls made to the romantic partners (r = -.34).”

Photo: flickr/Shannon Crosby

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Caption This for 10/26/12

This week's image:Be sure to vote for your favorite caption!

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The One Where NASA Asks for a Tractor Beam

David Ruffner wasn't thinking about tractor beams-- until NASA called.
Image Credit: Greg Williams / Wikiworld
Last year, a team of researchers at NASA set out to work with scientists to develop a beam of light that could draw objects back along its length. Affixed to a space-probe, the tractor beam would remotely collect extraterrestrial atmospheric and planetary particles and draw them back to the space-probe for analysis. Now, scientists at New York University have put science-fiction into practice with a device that can pull particles of sand, plastic, and even molecules and cells up a conveyor belt of light.

David Grier is an optical and soft condensed matter physicist at New York University and an expert on the forces that light can exert on matter.When NASA called, he and his graduate student, David Ruffner, decided to tackle a tractor beam technique that was recently proposed by theoretical physicists, but never demonstrated in the laboratory.

When you shine a laser pointer at a slide, it forms a little spot. The tractor beam that Grier and Ruffner pursued used a beam that forms a bulls eye instead of a spot. The beam is called a Bessel beam.

Figure 1: Reconstruction of the two Bessel beams
interfering to produce individual packets of light (red)
along the beam axis. Image Credit: David Ruffner

The scientists overlapped two Bessel beams so that when the beams combined, they formed an interference pattern of bright and dark spots along the beam axis. (Figure 1)

The shifting intensity of light along the axis produces a force, called an optical gradient force, which becomes stronger with higher contrast between the bright spots and dark spots.

As a particle crosses the beam axis, this force draws it into the areas of greater intensity (the bright spots). By shifting the pattern of bright spots, the scientists can direct this force up or down the length of the beam and draw objects along the beam.

Any object with a dipole moment feels this force. Magnetic dipoles have north and south poles, electric dipoles have ends of greater positive and negative charge. Grains of sand, plastic spheres, water molecules, proteins and DNA all have dipole moments.

Ruffner said that this makes the Bessel tractor beam a very general tool that can be broadly applied to transport a vast variety of materials containing dipole moments.

In the experiments published in Physics Review Letters on October 19, 2012, Ruffner and Grier sent the beam through a drop of liquid that contained spherical of silica (sand) particles, one-thousandth of a millimeter wide. The particles were drawn into the light packets by the force of the changing light intensity. Once trapped, the scientists pulled the chain of light--and the trapped particles-- back towards the laser source. Using a normal DVD player, Ruffner and Grier recorded the motion of the particles and reconstructed their movement in three-dimensions.(see video)

Video reconstruction of particles moving in opposite directions on two Bessel tractor beams. Image Credit: David Ruffner Right now, the new tractor beam can move objects about 30 micrometers and Ruffner thinks it might be possible to get around a millimeter with their beam. "I was actually kind of skeptical going into this project but it turns out that Bessel tractor beams really do a pretty good job," he said, "but to get to the kilometers NASA mentioned, that's a harder problem." In the meantime, Ruffner is teeming with ideas for how scientists may be able to use the beam-- from microfluidic "lab on a chip" circuits to air and dust collection for environmental testing.

"You get sort of excited," said Ruffner, "you could do something like in Star Trek-- it's very challenging and possibly impossible, but it's cool to work on a problem like that."

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where-nasa-asks-for-tractor-beam_25.html

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Essays on emergence, part IV

The previous three installments of this series have covered Robert Batterman?s idea that the concept of emergence can be made more precise by the fact that emergent phenomena such as phase transitions can be described by models that include mathematical singularities; Elena Castellani?s analysis of the relationship between effective field theori