Telescope Will Track Space Junk 3 Top Ten Myths About the Brain 5
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Telescope will track space junk 3 Top Ten Myths About the Brain 5 Gobekli Tepe: The World‘s First Temple? 8 Did Archaeologists Uncover Blackbeard's Treasure? 12 A New View Into California‘s Kelp Forests 15 When Triceratops Was a Giant Bison 16 An Unforgettable Photo of Martha Graham 18 Where Agatha Christie Dreamed Up Murder 20 How to Turn 8,000 Plastic Bottles Into a Building 26 Spitzer Sees Crystal 'Rain' in Outer Clouds of Infant Star 28 Significant Role Played by Oceans in Ancient Global Cooling 30 Ability to Switch Magnets 'On' or 'Off' Could Revolutionize Computing 32 Students Struggling With Math May Have a Neurocognitive Disorder 34 Astronomers Unveil Most Complete 3-D Map of Local Universe 36 Drug May Help Overwrite Bad Memories 38 Nanoengineers Invent New Biomaterial That More Closely Mimics Human Tissue 40 Nuclear Radiation Affects Sex of Babies, Study Suggests 42 NASA's Hubble Finds Rare 'Blue Straggler' Stars in the Milky Way's Hub 44 Autism Changes Molecular Structure of the Brain 46 Genetic Basis for Key Parasite Function in Malaria 48 Ultrasound Guide StarReversal Mirror Can Focus Light Deep Under the Skin 50 Testing Material Hardness and Strength 53 Cystic Fibrosis- Bacteria Could Help Fight Back Against Antibiotic Resistance 55 Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis Receive Less Protection from Pandemic Influenza 56 Physicists Explain the Long, Useful Lifetime of Carbon-14 57 Bleach in the Icelandic Volcanic Cloud 59 New Procedure to Make Brain Surgery Safer 61 Secreting Bacteria Eliminate Cost Barriers for Renewable Biofuel Production 63 Secret Lives of Feral and Free-Roaming House Cats Tracked 65 Sponge-Like Biosensor Crams Enormous Power Into Tiny Space 68 NASA Is Making Hot 'Way Cool' 70 Quantum Mechanical Entanglement of Two Remote Quantum Systems 72 Structure Formed by Strep Protein Can Trigger Toxic Shock 74 Superior Sound for Telephones, Mobile and Related Devices 76 Medicines from Plants 78 Assessing the Influence of Alaska Glaciers Is Slippery Work 80 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila Changes in Brain Circuitry Play Role in Moral Sensitivity as People Grow Up 82 A Visit to a Zoo Boosts Science and Environment Knowledge 84 Molecular Mechanism of Selected Autophagy Elucidated 86 Repetitive Error Correction in a Quantum Processor 88 In for Nasty Weather 90 Showing Up 95 Tablets, Yes; E-Texts, Maybe 97 Elaborating on Online Accessibility 99 Spit test offers guide to health 101 Critics weigh in on arsenic life 103 German E. coli outbreak leads to drug trial 106 Neuroscientists unite for 'Moon shot' 108 Hawaiian hot spot fuels volcano debate 110 Engineered antibodies cross blood–brain barrier 113 Rounding the electron 115 Vaccines: The real issues in vaccine safety 117 Wildlife threatened by Fukushima radiation 122 How to make a human neuron 124 Cambrian super-predators grew large in arms race 126 Massive Chilean dams approved 128 Dubious assumptions prime population bomb 130 Puzzle persists for 'degradeable' plastics 132 Oil spills underreported in Gulf of Mexico 134 Reform the PhD system or close it down 136 Gut study divides people into three types 138 Chimps give birth like humans 140 Cancer theory faces doubts 142 What makes a resilient reef? 144 A death in the lab 146 Graphene turns spin doctor 150 Dark matter no-show confronts supersymmetry 152 Are languages shaped by culture or cognition? 154 Biofuels need enforceable ethical standards 156 Hungry judges dispense rough justice 158 Fossil data enter the web period 160 Immigration tracked through desert detritus 162 Virgin Oceanic plumbs the depths for science 164 Cleaner, greener fireworks 166 Chaos promotes stereotyping 168 Antibiotic resistance shows up in India's drinking water 170 Stem cells make 'retina in a dish' 172 The pull of stronger magnets 174 Ukraine, Israel, Brazil and the United States are "loose" cultures 178 Ecologists find genomic clues to invasive and endangered plants 181 US radiation study sparks debate 183 Materials science: The pull of stronger magnets 185 Fattening up Schrödinger's cat 189 Antarctic microbes live life to the extreme 191 Rare-disease project has global ambitions 193 Social science: Web of war 194 Carbon-rich mangroves ripe for conservation 199 2 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 160 June 2011 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila Telescope will track space junk US military unveils instrument to catalogue debris and protect satellites from collisions. Gwyneth Dickey Zakaib The telescope will scan for debris that could threaten satellites in geosynchronous orbit.Lt Col Travis Blake, Ph.D., USAF - Program Manager for DARPA SST program A ground-based telescope that can scan the skies faster than any other of its size could help to protect satellites from collisions with space debris and each other. The Space Surveillance Telescope (SST), developed by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is to be used to protect US and international assets and commercial and international satellites in orbit around Earth. "We've got a lot of high-value missions up there, and if you're trying to do those missions with a blindfold on, you just don't know what's going to run into you at any time," says Chuck Laing, deputy division chief of the Architecture and Integration branch of Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. "It's important to know where everything is, how fast it's moving, and in what direction." Researchers are currently tracking an estimated 22,000 artificial objects that are orbiting Earth, from small bits of debris to large satellites. That number is expected to triple in the next 20 years, says Laing. Even a centimetre-sized piece of debris can cause considerable damage to crucial weather, communication or missile- warning systems. The US Air Force keeps a catalogue of all known orbiting objects through its Space Surveillance Network, an integrated system of ground- and space-based telescopes and radar. The network tracks debris to anticipate possible impacts, but better surveillance is needed to cope with the increasing number of objects, says Laing. The SST would focus mostly on the region in which objects in geosynchronous orbit reside, about 35,000 kilometres from Earth. The telescope, which took nine years and US$110 million to build, has a wide field of view, is very sensitive and can scan the sky several times in one night. It can collect data faster for dimmer objects than existing telescopes in the Space Surveillance Network. With the increased information that it provides, officials will be able to better predict the path of debris and warn satellite operators of potential collisions. "You can make a better decision if you have more data to feed into the model," says Laing. Eye on the sky The telescope's superior data-collection capacity comes from its 3.5-meter aperture, which is more than three times the size of ground-based telescopes already in use. It also has a three-mirror system to bring images into sharp focus over a wide field. But the engineering advances brought problems: whereas traditional two- 3 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 160 June 2011 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila mirrored telescopes focus light onto a flat surface, the three-mirrored type focuses onto a curved one, which makes it difficult to manufacture matching detectors. "We had to do pretty hard work on the optics," says Grant Stokes, head of the aerospace division at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington. His lab developed curved charge- coupled devices that capture photons and turn them into electrons for digital processing in the telescope. The SST took its first images in February 2011 and is currently being tested and aligned. It still has to pass an evaluation before joining the Space Surveillance Network. If it passes the tests, the SST could begin collecting data in about six months. And if it's a big enough improvement on current technology, the Air Force might place similar telescopes at key sites around the globe for 360-degree surveillance. At the moment, the SST sees only the night sky visible from its base at the White Sands Missile Range near Socorro, New Mexico. Researchers won't be able to use the telescope for their experiments, says Joseph Gambrell, chief of space situational awareness at the Air Force Space Command. "If we're going to try and get the most out of it, we really do need to maintain it as a Space Surveillance Network resource," he says. But a subset of the data might be made available on a website operated by US Strategic Command, and researchers might be able to get further data on request, says Gambrell. http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110422/full/news.2011.254.html 4 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 160 June 2011 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila Top Ten Myths About the Brain When it comes to this complex, mysterious, fascinating organ, what do—and don’t—we know? By Laura Helmuth Smithsonian.com, May 20, 2011 Repeated in pop culture for a century, the notion that humans only use 10 percent of our brains is false. Scans have shown that much of the brain is engaged even during simple tasks. 1. We use only 10 percent of our brains. This one sounds so compelling—a precise number, repeated in pop culture for a century, implying that we have huge reserves of untapped mental powers. But the supposedly unused 90 percent of the brain is not some vestigial appendix. Brains are expensive—it takes a lot of energy to build brains during fetal and childhood development and maintain them in adults.