Monday, March 25, 2013

SpaceX dragon spacecraft carrying NASA cargo ready for return to Earth

Mar. 24, 2013 ? More than three weeks after arriving at the International Space Station, the Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) Dragon spacecraft is ready for the trip back to Earth, now scheduled for Tuesday, March 26.

Dragon's originally scheduled March 25 return date was postponed due to inclement weather developing near its targeted splashdown site in the Pacific Ocean. The additional day spent attached to the orbiting laboratory will not affect science samples scheduled to return aboard the spacecraft.

NASA Television will provide coverage of Dragon's departure beginning at 4 a.m. EDT.

Dragon is scheduled to be detached from the Earth-facing side of the station's Harmony module and unberthed by Expedition 35 Flight Engineer and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn. Expedition 35 Commander Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency will back-up Marshburn and monitor Dragon's systems during the activity.

Marshburn, working from the robotic work station in the space station's cupola, will maneuver the station's robotic arm for the release of the spacecraft at 7:06 a.m. Dragon will execute three thruster firings to move away from the station to a safe distance for its deorbit burn at 11:40 a.m. Dragon will splash down around 12:36 p.m. in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California.

Dragon is the only space station resupply spacecraft able to return to Earth intact. It will return about 2,668 pounds (1,210 kilograms) of science samples from human research, biology and biotechnology studies, physical science investigations and education activities.

Experiment samples coming back to Earth will help researchers continue to assess the impact of long-duration spaceflight on the human body. Returning plant samples will aid in food production during future long-duration space missions and enhance crop production on Earth. Crystals grown aboard and returning from the station could help in the development of more efficient solar cells and semiconductor-based electronics.

For NASA TV schedule and video streaming information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about SpaceX, including ways to connect on social media, visit: http://www.spacex.com

For more information about the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA.

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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/o-65ort_o7o/130324195409.htm

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The Senate's Punchy, All-Night Budget Vote-A-Rama

The Senate?s vote-a-rama began shortly before 4 p.m., as former pre-school teacher Patty Murray warned her senatorial pupils about wandering off the floor.

?You leave at your own peril,? she said, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and master of these ceremonies.

Plenty wandered off anyway. The marathon voting session came, after all, on the eve of a two-week congressional recess and in the midst of the second night of March Madness basketball.

Even Sen. Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader who has mercilessly chastised Democrats for failing to put a budget on the floor for four years, admitted to splitting his attention between the floor proceedings and his home-state Western Kentucky Hilltoppers. ?Sen. McConnell cheering on #WKU from the U.S. Capitol tonight in between #budget votes. #GoTopps!? his office tweeted during the game. (They lost 57-64 to No. 1-ranked Kansas.)

Senators? shoulders slumped, tempers flared and Harry Potter even made a cameo in the congressional record as the voting dragged into the early Saturday hours.

As each roll call vote was taken, senators streamed from the sanctuary of their separate cloakrooms to cast votes for nonbinding budget amendments that ranged from the Keystone pipeline (backed by 62 senators, including 17 Democrats) to a carbon tax (overwhelmingly defeated) to instituting stricter sales tax collections on Internet purchases (it, too, passed).

By 6:30 in the evening, the second floor of the Capitol smelled of barbeque. A buffet was dished out in McConnell?s office, as Republican senators traipsed back and forth from the floor holding paper plates piled high with meat, cornbread, baked beans and salad.

For a while, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., decamped to a quiet hallway off the floor, whipping out her laptop to catch up on work. She was sure to return to the floor as the Senate took up a measure to express the chamber?s displeasure with federal subsidies for ?too big to fail? banks. There was no opposition but members wanted a recorded vote anyway.

It passed 99-0 and clapping erupted -- a big Senate no-no -- in the well of the chamber. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., pointed blame at Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri. ?It was Schumer,? McCaskill pleaded innocently. (Both she and Schumer had clapped.)

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, thumbed through an iPad on the floor during one of many recorded tallies, perhaps unaware that one of Senate Republicans? favorite talking points in recent months has been that the iPad didn?t exist the last time Senate Democrats passed a budget.

At least he wasn?t making any noise. The volume on the floor kept steadily growing as Murray asked the chair to restore order. Around 10 p.m., Murray declared, ?I know there is alot of March Madness going on but I?d like to keep calm on the floor.? The chamber quieted briefly before returning to the mood and noise level of a cocktail party, befitting the late Friday night hour.

Even the leaders of the Senate budget warring -- Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Murray -- stood together and laughed, at times. Just weeks earlier, Sessions had accused Murray of insinuating that he disliked poor people during a budget ?hearing related to welfare and food stamps.

Gillibrand was spotted showing off Friday?s New York Times, which featured a front-page story about the growing clout of women in the Senate. She flipped and pointed her colleagues to the story?s jump page, which just so happened to feature a prominent color photo of her. Meanwhile, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, sat in his chair, reading a hardcover book in his newish black-framed hipster glasses.

Around 11 p.m., Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid came to the floor to praise the evening?s progress. ?We?re doing fine,? he said. ?We?re not at carnival stage yet. Let?s proceed and try to reach this with a lot of dignity.?

None of these late-night votes had any chance of making it into law. Instead, this marathon session was all about setting policy precedents and scoring political points ahead of the 2014 mid-term elections, when the Republicans hope to take back the Senate.

Senators loosened further as the clock ticked past midnight. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, rose to oppose an amendment that defunded, in some way, a part of the president?s health care law, likening the GOP effort to tossing ?Harry Potter?s invisibility cloak? over the legislation. The amendment, one of multiple attempts to chip away at the health care?law during the vote-a-rama, failed by a voice vote.

Good humor was in shorter-supply around 1:30 a.m., as Republicans continued to demand more votes. ?Reid pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes during one exchange between Murray and Sessions. Murray pleaded with Republicans to consider the Senate?s ?elderly? members.

The amendments continued unabated.

By 3 a.m., Reid and Murray demanded that senators, like unruly schoolchildren, stay seated in their desks to speed up the process.

Republicans obliged, happy to be having their say on the floor, no matter the time.

?I?m glad we?re voting,? Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, had said a few hours earlier. ?It?s what the Senate should be doing every day.?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senates-punchy-night-budget-vote-rama-044418332--politics.html

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Saturday, March 23, 2013

Lifetime wins legal battle to air Chris Porco movie

By Tim Kenneally

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Rejoice, crime-biopic fans; Lifetime will "Romeo Killer: The Chris Porco Story" this Saturday after all.

After being slapped with an injunction by a New York judge on Tuesday, mere days before its premiere date, Lifetime won an appeal in New York State Appellate Division, Third Department, to premiere the film Saturday at 8 p.m., as originally intended.

New York Supreme Court judge Robert Muller handed down the injunction after Porco - the subject of the movie, who was convicted in 2006 of murdering his father and maiming his mother - claimed that the movie uses a "substantially fictionalized account ... about plaintiff and the events that led to his incarceration," and uses his name for "purposes of trade," in violation of New York Civil Rights Law section 51.

According to papers filed by Lifetime's legal team on Wednesday, Porco had neither seen the film or read its script.

Lifetime's legal team protested Muller's decision, calling it a "classic prior restraint that violates the First Amendment" and contains "multiple errors of law."

Lifetime's lawyers further asserted that "the details of the crimes, the criminal investigation, and the conviction of Porco as presented in the movie are all factually correct and well-documented."

"Romeo Killer: The Chris Porco Story" stars "Hatfields & McCoys" actor Matt Barr as Porco. The cast also includes "Will & Grace" alum Eric McCormack and Lolita Davidovich of "Gods and Monsters."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lifetime-wins-legal-battle-air-chris-porco-movie-230048471.html

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Iowa State rolls to 76-58 win over Notre Dame

Iowa State forward Georges Niang points to a teammate in the first half of a second-round game against Notre Dame at the NCAA college basketball tournament, Friday, March 22, 2013, in Dayton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Skip Peterson)

Iowa State forward Georges Niang points to a teammate in the first half of a second-round game against Notre Dame at the NCAA college basketball tournament, Friday, March 22, 2013, in Dayton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Skip Peterson)

Iowa State forward Melvin Ejim dunks against Iowa State half of a second-round game at the NCAA college basketball tournament on Friday, March 22, 2013, in Dayton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Skip Peterson)

Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey watches the second half of a second-round game against Iowa State at the NCAA college basketball tournament on Friday, March 22, 2013, in Dayton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Al Behrman)

Notre Dame forward Jack Cooley (45) shoots against Iowa State in the first half of a second-round game at the NCAA college basketball tournament, Friday, March 22, 2013, in Dayton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Skip Peterson)

(AP) ? Freshman Georges Niang matched a season high with 19 points and Iowa State, showing it can do much more than just fire away from outside the 3-point line, dismantled Notre Dame 76-58 on Friday night in the NCAA tournament.

The 10th-seeded Cyclones (23-11) will play No. 2 seed Ohio State on Sunday. The Buckeyes advanced with a 95-70 thrashing of Iona.

Iowa State led the nation in 3-pointers this season, but the Cyclones were just as effective from short range in ousting the Fighting Irish (25-10), who played their final game as a member of the Big East and will join the Atlantic Coast Conference next season.

Melvin Ejim added 17 points for Iowa State, which shot better than 70 percent for much of the second half.

Tom Knight scored 14 to lead the Fighting Irish.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-03-22-BKC-NCAA-Iowa-St-Notre-Dame/id-74a037df0ee84036a78f4e11786db02c

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Obama warns of 'enclave for extremism' in Syria

U.S. President Barack Obama, left, and Jordan's King Abdullah II, right, shake hands following their joint new conference at the King's Palace in Amman, Jordan, Friday, March 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

U.S. President Barack Obama, left, and Jordan's King Abdullah II, right, shake hands following their joint new conference at the King's Palace in Amman, Jordan, Friday, March 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

President Barack Obama walks with Jordan's King Abdullah II to participate in an official arrival ceremony, Friday, March 22, 2013, at Al-Hummar Palace, the residence of Jordanian King Abdullah II, in Amman, Jordan. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Barack Obama and Jordan's King Abdullah II walk from an official arriveal ceremony at Al-Hummar Palace, the residence of Jordanian King Abdullah II, Friday, March 22, 2013, in Amman, Jordan. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Barack Obama listens as Jordan's King Abdullah II speaks during their joint new conference at the King's Palace in Amman, Jordan Friday, March 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

President Barack Obama and Jordan's King Abdullah II arrive for their joint new conference at the King's Palace in Amman, Jordan Friday, March 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

(AP) ? President Barack Obama warned Friday that an "enclave for extremism" could fill a leadership void in war-torn Syria, a chilling scenario for an already tumultuous region, especially for Jordan, Syria's neighbor and a nation at the crossroads of the struggle for stability in the Middle East.

In a significant step toward easing regional tensions, Obama also brokered a phone call between leaders from Israel and Turkey that resulted in an extraordinary apology from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a deadly 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla. The call marked a diplomatic victory for the president and a crucial realignment in the region, given Israel's and Turkey's shared interests, in particular the fear that Syria's civil war could spill over their respective borders.

Obama said he remains confident that embattled Syrian leader Bashar Assad's government will ultimately collapse. But he warned that when that happens, Syria would not be "put back together perfectly," and he said he fears the nation could become a hotbed for extremists.

"I am very concerned about Syria becoming an enclave for extremism, because extremists thrive in chaos," Obama said during a joint news conference with Jordan's King Abdullah II. "They thrive in failed states, they thrive in power vacuums."

More than 70,000 people have been killed during the two-year conflict in Syria, making it by far the deadliest of the Arab Spring uprisings that have roiled the region since 2011. Longtime autocrats in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya have been ousted, ushering in new governments that are sometimes at odds with the Obama administration and its Mideast allies.

Obama's 24-hour stop in Jordan marked his first visit to an Arab nation since the 2011 Mideast protests began. Jordan's monarchy has clung to power in part by enacting political reforms, including parliamentary elections and significant revisions to the country's 60-year-old constitution. Still, tensions continue to simmer, with the restive population questioning the speed and seriousness of the changes.

Protecting Abdullah is paramount to U.S. interests. The 51-year-old king is perhaps Obama's strongest Arab ally and a key player in efforts to jumpstart peace talks between Palestinians and Israel. Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel, and that agreement has become even more significant given the rise of Islamist leaders in Egypt, which was the first Arab country to ink a treaty with the Jewish state, in the 1970s.

Egypt's new leaders have so far pledged to uphold the treaty, though there are strong concerns in Israel and the U.S. about whether that will hold.

By virtue of geography, Jordan's future is particularly vulnerable to the turmoil in the Middle East. It shares borders with Iraq, Israel and the West Bank, in addition to Syria. More than 460,000 Syrians have flowed across the Jordanian border seeking refuge since the civil war began, seeking an escape from the violence.

The flood of refugees has overwhelmed the country of 6 million people, straining Jordan's resources, including health care and education, and pushing the budget deficit to a record high $3 billion last year. Abdullah also fears the half-million refugees could create a regional base for extremists and terrorists, saying recently that such elements were already "establishing firm footholds in some areas."

Obama announced that his administration planned to work with Congress to allocate $200 million to Jordan to help ease the financial burden.

Despite the influx, Abdullah firmly declared Jordan would not close its borders to the refugees, many women and children.

"This is something that we just can't do," he said. "It's not the Jordanian way. We have historically opened our arms to many of our neighbors through many decades of Jordan's history."

Obama had come to Jordan from Israel, where he spent three days coaxing Netanyahu to apologize to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for Israel's role in the deaths of nine Turkish activists during a naval raid on a Gaza-bound international flotilla. The 20-minute phone call took place just before Obama departed, in a trailer on the airport tarmac near a waiting Air Force One, and resulted in the restoration of normal diplomatic relations between the two countries.

"The timing was good for that conversation to take place," Obama said, adding that the phone call was the first step in rebuilding trust between Israel and Turkey.

The president opened the last full day of his Mideast trip with a series of stops around Jerusalem and Bethlehem, all steeped in political and religious symbolism.

Accompanied by Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres, Obama laid wreaths at the graves of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism who died in 1904 before realizing his dream of a Jewish homeland, and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995.

Obama and his hosts arrived at the Herzl grave site under cloudless skies. Obama approached Herzl's resting place alone and bowed his head in silence. He turned briefly to ask Netanyahu where to place a small stone in the Jewish custom, then laid the stone atop the grave.

"It is humbling and inspiring to visit and remember the visionary who began the remarkable establishment of the State of Israel," Obama wrote in a guestbook. "May our two countries possess the same vision and will to secure peace and prosperity for future generations."

At Rabin's grave a short walk away, Obama was greeted by members of the late leader's family. He initially placed a stone on Rabin's wife's side of the grave, then returned to place one atop Rabin's side. In a gesture linking the U.S. and Israel, the stone placed on Rabin's grave was from the grounds of the Martin Luther King memorial in Washington, the White House said.

Friday's stop at Herzl's grave, together with Obama's earlier viewing of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient Hebrew texts, were an attempt by the president to emphasize his view that the rationale for Israel's existence rests with its historical ties to the region and with a vision that predated the Holocaust. Obama was criticized in Israel for his 2009 Cairo speech in which he gave only the example of the Holocaust as reason justifying Israel's existence.

Obama was to make a stop Saturday at Petra, Jordan's fabled ancient city, before flying back to Washington.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Jamal Halaby contributed to this report.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-03-22-ML-Obama/id-5bb79f4263f346238e555367f66a65e0

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Friday, March 22, 2013

Lili Balfour: How to Think Like a Winner When You Feel Like a Loser

This post originally appeared on www.atelieradvisors.com/think

A winner is a loser who was relentless in his or her pursuit of success.

Life is hard. Eighty percent of companies started today will fail. As entrepreneurs, we must constantly arm ourselves with the tools needed to maintain our sanity and thrive. We must constantly remind ourselves that the darkest hour is just before the dawn. We must think like a winner when we feel like a loser.

When We Think Like a Winner We See The Opportunity, Not the Obstacle.

A winner prepares his or her mind and body for success:

Meditate -- Thoughts create actions, actions create reality. Begin each morning focused on gratitude for what you currently have and visualize the world as you would like to see it. Winners are grateful, not resentful. Winners pour their energy into the good in their life and visualize all the possibilities the world could potentially offer.

Tip: Meditate for (at least) five minutes every morning or whenever you need a mental reset.

Connect -- We become the people we spend the most time with, so select your circle carefully. Surround yourself with inspiring people. Kindly eliminate negative people from your life.

Tip: Build a circle of people who inspire you to be your best and provide a platform for you to honestly express your fears and concerns about life.

Exercise -- Exercise helps to clear the mind and stimulate creativity. If you are stuck on a difficult problem, take a walk. New ideas will flow through your mind, your energy level will increase and you will be more productive when you get back to work.

Tip: Find time to exercise, whether it is walking or biking to work or visiting the gym during lunch or playing sports in the evening.

Laugh -- Laughter is proven to decrease stress and increase your immune system. Try this right now: smile. A smile turns into a laugh. A laugh distresses your mind and energizes your body. In fact, a doctor in India, Dr. Madan Kataria, created laughter yoga to combine two powerful tools -- laughter and stretching -- and people around the world have incorporated his approach.

Tip: The next time you are feeling tied down to your computer, take a second to read Buzzfeed and stretch.

Eat -- Food can give us energy or take it away. The opposite of a food coma is a well-fed, active mind. Develop an eating plan based on foods that stimulate your body and mind. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, whole grain, and water are a good start. Reduce or eliminate; sugar, alcohol, fried and processed food.

Tip: Utilize free tools, such as MyFitnessPal, to analyze your food intake.

Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

Stress, depression, and anxiety are normal parts of life. When handled correctly, they are harmless. If left untreated, they can lead to self-destructive behavior including substance abuse and suicide.

According to a study completed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration in 2004, approximately 10 percent of Americans were dependent on alcohol and/or drugs. Nearly a decade later this problem persists as people turn to prescription drugs and alcohol to solve their problems, leading to an increase in drug overdoses and alcohol related deaths.

The Ugly Truth

The World Health Organization conducted a study in 2009, concluding that the current average world suicide rate was 10.07 per 100,000 people, while the U.S. rate surpassed this rate with 11.10 per 100,000 people. To put this in perspective; Peru held the lowest rate at .85 and Belarus claimed the highest rate at 36.8. An elementary understanding of each culture makes the contrast crystal clear. Existing in a system with excessive stress and limited resources leads many to deep despair.


Image courtesy of Chartbin

If you're feeling stuck, please know that you are not alone. It is natural to feel overwhelmed while you are building a company. You are not the first person to feel this way.

  • There are 20 failed suicide attempts for each successful attempt.
  • Every 40 seconds somebody dies by suicide.
  • Worldwide suicide rates increased by 60 percent in last 45 years.

There are several organizations that can guide you through a rough patch. I've listed the most well known below. Feel free to add any I have missed in the comments.

http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org
http://twloha.com/

https://www.save.org

?

?

?

Follow Lili Balfour on Twitter: www.twitter.com/atelieradvisors

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lili-balfour/how-to-think-like-a-winne_b_2920018.html

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Alley receives AAAS Public Engagement Award

Alley receives AAAS Public Engagement Award [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 22-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: A'ndrea Elyse Messer
aem1@psu.edu
814-865-9481
Penn State

Richard B. Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences, was named the recipient of the 2012 American Association for the Advancement of Science Public Engagement in Science Award.

He received this award at the 2013 AAAS annual meeting for "his decades-long, broad-based and exceptionally effective efforts communicating the best of climate science to excite the interests of the general public and policy makers."

The AAAS Award for Public Engagement with Science, established in 1987, recognizes scientists and engineers who make outstanding contributions to the "popularization of science." The award conveys a monetary prize of $5,000, a commemorative plaque, complimentary registration and travel to the AAAS annual meeting.

Alley has provided advice and scientific information on climate change to the White House and to policymakers through briefings, testimonies, fact-finding trips and written materials.

His efforts to engage the public in science include the PBS miniseries Earth: The Operators' Manual, based on the book he wrote, and more than a dozen science documentaries. He regularly lectures to a wide range of groups including his peers, elementary-school students, scouts and church groups. He helped develop an undergraduate course that took him and his students to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and the top of Mesa Verde.

Alley has made more than a dozen field expeditions to ice sheets and glaciers. Recently he was honored with the Heinz Award for leadership in climate and polar studies and "U.S. News and World Report" included him in its Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Leadership Hall of Fame.

His work has helped show that past regional to global climate changes occurred as rapidly as a few years. These changes were larger than any experienced by agricultural or industrial humans to date. He uses data analysis and modeling to explore the future of the large ice sheets and their effects on sea-level change, focusing on ice-bed interactions with implications for rapid glacier flow and sea-level change, interpretation of geological records, climate changes and mountain-belt evolution. He contributed extensively to the methods available for measuring ice-core properties and for the accurate and confident conversion of well-dated histories of temperature, accumulation rates and other paleoclimatic variables.

###


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Alley receives AAAS Public Engagement Award [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 22-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: A'ndrea Elyse Messer
aem1@psu.edu
814-865-9481
Penn State

Richard B. Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences, was named the recipient of the 2012 American Association for the Advancement of Science Public Engagement in Science Award.

He received this award at the 2013 AAAS annual meeting for "his decades-long, broad-based and exceptionally effective efforts communicating the best of climate science to excite the interests of the general public and policy makers."

The AAAS Award for Public Engagement with Science, established in 1987, recognizes scientists and engineers who make outstanding contributions to the "popularization of science." The award conveys a monetary prize of $5,000, a commemorative plaque, complimentary registration and travel to the AAAS annual meeting.

Alley has provided advice and scientific information on climate change to the White House and to policymakers through briefings, testimonies, fact-finding trips and written materials.

His efforts to engage the public in science include the PBS miniseries Earth: The Operators' Manual, based on the book he wrote, and more than a dozen science documentaries. He regularly lectures to a wide range of groups including his peers, elementary-school students, scouts and church groups. He helped develop an undergraduate course that took him and his students to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and the top of Mesa Verde.

Alley has made more than a dozen field expeditions to ice sheets and glaciers. Recently he was honored with the Heinz Award for leadership in climate and polar studies and "U.S. News and World Report" included him in its Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Leadership Hall of Fame.

His work has helped show that past regional to global climate changes occurred as rapidly as a few years. These changes were larger than any experienced by agricultural or industrial humans to date. He uses data analysis and modeling to explore the future of the large ice sheets and their effects on sea-level change, focusing on ice-bed interactions with implications for rapid glacier flow and sea-level change, interpretation of geological records, climate changes and mountain-belt evolution. He contributed extensively to the methods available for measuring ice-core properties and for the accurate and confident conversion of well-dated histories of temperature, accumulation rates and other paleoclimatic variables.

###


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/ps-ara032213.php

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Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Man kills elderly wife, self at Pa. hospice, DA says

By M. Alex Johnson, staff writer, NBC News

An 83-year-old woman and her husband were found shot to death in her hospice room Tuesday in what authorities in Allentown, Pa., were investigating as a murder-suicide.

Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin said there were no witnesses to the incident at Lehigh Valley Hospital. He said the man, identified as Elwood Osman, shot his wife, Mildred, and then killed himself.


The shooting was confined to the room, and "no other patients or staff were placed in jeopardy," Martin said in a statement after the bodies were found about 1 p.m. ET.?

"Contrary to some rumors, this was not an active shooter situation," he said.

Chuck Lewis, senior vice president of Lehigh Valley Health Network, which operates the facility, confirmed that the dead woman was an inpatient in the hospice unit.

On its website, the hospital says patients can enter the hospice unit only with a diagnosis of a terminal illness and a life expectancy of six months or less.?

All of the rooms are private, meaning there wouldn't have been a second patient in the woman's room to have witnessed the incident.

"This is a very tragic event, and our hearts go out to the family of the deceased and our Lehigh Valley Health Network colleagues who were involved," Lewis said in a statement.

Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook.

Watch the top videos on NBCNews.com

This story was originally published on

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/19/17374616-man-kills-elderly-wife-in-murder-suicide-at-pennsylvania-hospice-da-says?lite

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Sanford advances in S.C. race, Colbert's sister wins

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) ? Mark Sanford says he believes in "a God of second chances," and now the former South Carolina governor has taken the first step toward reviving a political career that was derailed by an extramarital affair.

Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of political satirist Stephen Colbert, always dreamed of a career in politics ? and now she has a chance to realize that dream.

As Sanford advanced Tuesday night to an April 2 GOP runoff for an open congressional seat in a southern coastal district, Colbert Busch easily won the Democratic primary to earn a spot on the May 7 general election ballot.

The race has drawn national attention because of Sanford's well-known fall from grace and Colbert Busch's relationship to Stephen Colbert, who parodies a conservative political commentator as host of TV's "The Colbert Report."

Colbert Busch swamped perennial candidate Ben Frasier on Tuesday to win the Democratic nomination for the seat vacated by Tim Scott, who was appointed to the U.S. Senate to replace fellow Republican Jim DeMint, now head of The Heritage Foundation.

She says she's long dreamed of a career in politics. She remembers watching the 1968 funeral of slain U.S. senator and Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy on television with her younger brother Stephen sitting in her lap. That's when she promised herself that one day she would run for office.

She is currently on leave from her job as director of business development for Clemson University's Wind Turbine Drive Testing Facility in North Charleston.

Colbert Busch now faces the winner of the GOP primary runoff in the 1st Congressional District.

"I understand your frustrations and your aspirations. I will never stop listening to you and I am ready to be your voice in Washington," Colbert Bush told her supporters Tuesday night.

"My pledge is to you. You are my only cause. I will fight to improve your lives and the lives of your children," she added.

Sanford, trying to mount a political comeback, easily outdistanced the other 15 Republicans in the field Tuesday. But with only 37 percent of the vote, he finds himself in a runoff.

The Republican campaign was driven more by personality than debate over party direction, with most candidates boasting their conservative credibility.

Former Charleston County Councilman Curtis Bostic appeared to be in second place following the voting, but the margin is so narrow ? less than 1 percent over state Sen. Larry Grooms ? that it will trigger an automatic recount this week. Teddy Turner, the son of media mogul Ted Turner, finished fourth.

Tuesday was Sanford's first run for office since a 2009 scandal in which he acknowledged an affair. After disappearing and telling his staff he was out hiking the Appalachian Trail, he returned to the state to reveal that he was in Argentina with his mistress. Sanford and his wife Jenny divorced, and he is now engaged to the Argentine woman.

"Are you ready to change things in Washington?" Sanford, flanked by his four sons, asked a boisterous crowd at a restaurant in Charleston's historic district. "I'm incredibly humbled by the outpouring of support we have seen tonight."

Earlier Tuesday, Sanford said it was "a treat and a blessing" to be back on the ballot. He represented the district in Congress for three terms before he was elected governor, serving two terms.

"We all hope for a second chance. I believe in a God of second chances," Sanford said after voting Tuesday.

Whether against Sanford, Grooms or Bostic, Colbert Busch would appear to have an uphill battle in the May 7 special election in the strongly Republican district.

Last fall, Mitt Romney won the conservative district by 18 percentage points, although he beat President Barack Obama by 10 percentage points statewide.

The district reaches from the sea islands with million-dollar oceanfront homes northeast of Charleston to southwest along the coast to the gated communities of Hilton Head Island, with its many Yankee transplants. When Sanford ran in the 1990s, the district reached into more conservative Horry County, but that area has been split and is now part of another district.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sanford-advances-sc-race-colberts-sister-wins-084316580--election.html

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35 years waiting for smoke: A witness to Vatican history

Catholics and the curious flooded St. Peter's Square to greet Pope Francis on the day of the ceremony to officially install him as pope. NBC's Keir Simmons reports.

By Stephen Weeke, Producer, NBC News

ROME -- Italians have an expression for things that happen rarely, like running into an old school friend who lives far away. They?ll say they see the person ?ogni morte di papa? or ?every death of a pope.??

With only four conclaves in the past 35 years there?s good reason for the expression, despite the fact that Benedict?s surprise resignation may force the phrase to change to ?ogni cambio di papa?? or ?every change of a pope.?

Though the events are few and far between, I?ve had the pleasure of being here the last three times the white smoke went up. And the election of Pope Francis feels reminiscent of the heady excitement surrounding the election of another outsider: Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II.

Zany charm of a crowd of strangers
The first time I saw the white smoke I was just 16 years old, the editor of my high school newspaper at an American school here in Rome.


It was October 16, 1978, and it was the second conclave in just a few months, because the newly elected John Paul I had died after only 33 days in office.?

St. Peter?s Square was not as well lit as it is today. Only the church?s fa?ade and the Sistine Chapel roof chimney were illuminated. The shoulder-to-shoulder crowd of almost 100,000 stood in a chilled darkness, sustained by an excited, Christmas-like anticipation of the announcement of a new pope. There?s something quite unusual, a little zany and inexplicably charming about standing in an enormous group of strangers, waiting for an arcane smoke signal to reveal a new leader.

The smoke finally appeared on that October night and there was a rush to interpret whether it was black or white. With a history of spotty results when it comes to ballot burning, there was room for doubt, but it ultimately turned a solid white and a thrill ran through the crowd. The anticipation built even more as we waited for the first appearance on the balcony, and the question ?Who will it be?? crisscrossed the crowd in a dozen languages.

Cardinals from around the world gathered in the Vatican to elect the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Roman Catholic Church made history that night, electing the first foreign pope in more than four centuries. The red velvet draperies trembled and parted to bring forth a vibrant, youthful Polish cardinal. He immediately charmed the crowd in stumbling Italian, and then went on to radically transform the papacy with intercontinental travel, a constant television presence and a historic moral challenge to the Soviet Union?s harsh rule of Eastern European nations behind the Iron Curtain.

After high school and during college I worked for several of the American network news bureaus in Rome. Pope John Paul II was almost killed by a Turkish gunman in St. Peter?s Square in 1981, and I spent most of 1982 working for ABC News. In June of that year, I flew on my first ?papal plane? when the pontiff visited Britain.

Satellite television and videotape had just come of age with John Paul II?s election, and the Pole?s long pontificate would rise, thrive and fall under the unblinking eye of the constant camera lens. For people who had known only one pope their whole lives, John Paul II would come to symbolize Catholicism: both stubborn and frail, often charming but also uncompromising.

Transitional, not transformational
The death of John Paul II in 2005 was mourned by millions. I returned to the Vatican for NBC News in 1996 after many years working in the United States and covered the last decade of his papacy.

Like most of my fellow Vatican watchers, I knew the Polish pope would be an impossible act to follow. Still, I hoped the cardinals would go for a bold choice over a safe one. ?

Though Catholic women and nuns have long run the Roman Catholic Church's hospitals, schools, and parishes, women cannot be ordained, say Mass, or vote for the pope. As Pope Francis is officially installed, many women think it's time they be allowed deeper involvement. Maria Shriver reports.

Benedict was not that bold choice. But clearly the cardinals felt the church would benefit from a transitional figure, rather than a transformational one like John Paul II.

The white smoke came quickly that time, on the third vote after just a day and a half, and the excitement in the square was shared with cellphones in the age of the Internet.?

The election of 78-year-old Joseph Ratzinger, a full 20 years older than John Paul II at his election, would shift the image of the papacy to a staid, conservative and bookish one.

Many believe resigning was the most courageous act of Benedict?s entire papacy. It took a lot for someone who loves the trappings of Catholic conservatism as much as he does to break with 600 years of tradition, but Benedict did it, making way for one more puff of white smoke.

A swift surprise
This latest conclave also lasted a mere day and a half, a surprise in itself. Unlike the last one, where Ratzinger went in a clear favorite, this time there was an open field, no top contenders, and for the first time in history, not one but two Americans on the short list of possible popes. ?

Courtesy Stephen Weeke/ NBC News

NBC News Producer Stephen Weeke walks with American Cardinal Timothy Dolan in Vatican City recently.

I now work out of San Francisco but came back to Rome to help TODAY with this conclave. After working all day at our live location overlooking the Vatican, I made it through the rain and crowds into St. Peter?s Square with minutes to spare before the smoke appeared.

The white smoke poured out of the chimney, with the force and color of something bellowing from a steam-engine locomotive -- there was no ambiguity this time. The crowd went crazy in the age of smartphones and social media, and basically crashed the local cellular network.

I waited for the announcement with other Americans, excited at the prospect of witnessing the arrival of an American pope. When the red drapes revealed a 76-year-old Argentine, I was initially a little disappointed. But the cardinal of Buenos Aires didn?t take long to change that feeling.?

When the new Pope Francis bent down to ask the crowd to pray for him, before he would bless them, I was moved. This man's humility seemed genuine, palpable and extremely public. Its effect on the crowd was immediate.?

Since then he has broken the mold in half a dozen ways. Refusing the papal limo and riding the bus back after his election with his fellow cardinals. Refusing the gold cross and keeping his iron one. Refusing the red slippers and keeping his clunky black walking shoes. Refusing a prepared speech and speaking off the cuff.

By naming himself after Saint Francis of Assisi, a beloved figure whose radical embrace of poverty reformed an ailing and corrupt church 800 years ago, the pope has already telegraphed that he is open to change.

It's high time the world had a pope with a common touch and a flair for the unscripted. Francis is already reminding a lot of us of the young John Paul II. I?m glad I was here to see his white smoke.?

Stephen Weeke was NBC News' Vatican producer from 1996 to 2005. He is now based in Northern California.?

Related:?

Green pope: Francis pleads for environment

Full coverage of Pope Francis by NBC News

Outcast ruler Robert Mugabe dodges travel ban for pope's installation

Impromptu appearance, off-the-cuff remarks: Pope's Sunday surprises delight

?

Traveling through history with John Paul; Vatican reporter recalls excitement, adventure of covering pontiff?

Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/19/17363331-35-years-waiting-for-smoke-a-witness-to-vatican-history?lite

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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Bad reason to invade Iraq No. 2: weapons of mass destruction

Even if Saddam Hussein had retained WMDs, so what?

By Dan Murphy,?Staff writer / March 18, 2013

I covered the Iraq war from the summer of 2003 until 2008, and saw at first hand the consequences of the decision to invade. Skeptical of the wisdom of the war before the invasion, living and working in Iraq solidified that into certainty. I'll be putting out some of my thoughts on the war in a series of posts in the next few days.

Skip to next paragraph Dan Murphy

Staff writer

Dan Murphy is a staff writer for the Monitor's international desk, focused on the Middle East.?Murphy, who has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and more than a dozen other countries, writes and edits Backchannels. The focus? War and international relations, leaning toward things Middle East.

Recent posts

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The biggest ?argument? made for invading Iraq was that Saddam Hussein had sundry chemical weapons programs: He had roving chemical weapons labs on wheels, he had weaponized anthrax, he had tons of sarin nerve gas that he was itching to offload to a multinational terrorist group, he?d even somehow managed to clandestinely revive his nuclear program. ?

?We don?t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,? then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice solemnly warned America.

As it turned out, none of this was true. Relentless economic sanctions since the Gulf War had crippled Iraq?s economy and driven basic measures of national wellbeing, like childhood mortality and lifespan, through the floor. Saddam had given up all of his chemical weapons stockpiles, abandoned efforts at biological weapons, and had no ongoing nuclear work of any kind. Today these are indisputable facts.

But setting aside how Iraqi exiles like Ahmed Chalabi, eager to draw the US into a war for their own purposes, were allowed to spin a web of hearsay, rumors, and fabrications into an argument for war with the help of the Bush administration, let?s assume for a minute they were right. Would that have then been a justification for the invasion?

Probably not. Saddam Hussein had certainly possessed chemical weapons in the past, and had even used them ? on the Kurds at Halabja in 1989 and during his brutal war with Iran at various points, including mustard gas on the battlefield in 1984, during a period of d?tente between Washington and Baghdad.

That didn?t trouble the US much in those days. Despite strong evidence of the Iraqi Army's use of chemical weapons against the Iranians in 1984, the US nevertheless went ahead with full normalization of relations that year. ?

Why? Because US officials were worried that Saddam might lose his war with the Islamic Republic.

Relations with him soured after his invasion of Kuwait in 1989, and the US became much more interested in human rights violations by his Baath regime after that point. The horrors of Halabja were frequently referred to, but if in 1991 or 1992 Halabja wasn?t an argument for regime change, why would it become one a decade later?

The answer is that it shouldn?t have. There was no reason to suspect Hussein would arm Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that hated his regime almost as much as it hates the US, with chemical weapons, thus losing control of when, if, and against whom they?d be used. So far in human history, no government has done that. And he knew that such an action would almost certainly precipitate the US-led invasion that he?d long feared.

What about the ?mushroom cloud?? Again, there was no evidence of an ongoing nuclear program (because there was no ongoing nuclear program) but if there had been, does that require regime change? Not as the first order of business (witness how Iran is being handled, which has an actual and sophisticated nuclear program and has for many decades).

And certainly not because Al Qaeda, a group with no ties to or direction from the Iraqi regime, had managed to take over a few airplanes with boxcutters and fly them into buildings in the US.

Read the first installment of this series, "Bad reason to invade Iraq No. 1: Saddam was 'evil'," here.?

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, former and current Monitor journalists who covered the war are looking at where the Iraq stands today and how things stood at the peak of the war.?

*?Ten years after invasion, Iraq remains dangerously divided???In the new Iraq, old sectarian fears remain. Around Baghdad's Green Zone, concrete walls pulled down a year ago are going back up.

*?The day the conflict changed???Ten years after the Iraq invasion, reporter Scott Peterson recalls the day a suicide attack threw him out of bed in a formerly quiet Baghdad neighborhood ? and blew a hole in any sense that the war was keeping its distance.

*?On the road to Baghdad for 17 days???Andy Nelson, who photographed the US invasion of Iraq, recalls the pulling down of Saddam's statue ? and early signs of chaos.?

*?The Iraq war: a timeline?? A photo collection depicting the main events of the conflict. ?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/B2Cm2v0xquQ/Bad-reason-to-invade-Iraq-No.-2-weapons-of-mass-destruction

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Photos: Haunting underwater art gallery

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Mon, Mar 18, 2013 12:00 PM EDT

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lightbox/haunting-underwater-art-gallery-slideshow/

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Food memories can help with weight loss

Food memories can help with weight loss [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 18-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Sarah Stamper
sarah.stamper@liv.ac.uk
01-517-943-044
University of Liverpool

Research led by a psychologist at the University of Liverpool has found that using memories of recent meals reduces the amount of food eaten later on. It also found that being distracted when eating leads to increased consumption.

Researchers analysed 24 separate studies which had examined the impact of awareness, attention, memory and distraction on how much food we eat. They found that remembering meals, being more aware and paying added attention to meals results in lower food consumption and could help with weight loss programmes.

Techniques such as writing down previous meals, using visual reminders of previous meals and keeping food wrappers were found to help with food memories and lead to a reduction in meal sizes.

Dr Eric Robinson, from the Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, said: "Our research found that if people recalled their last meal as being filling and satisfying then they ate less during their next meal. This could be developed as a new strategy to help with weight loss and maintenance and reduce the need for calorie controlled dieting.

"However, whilst techniques which remind you of what you have eaten reduce food consumption, some practical strategies to put these findings into practice need to be further developed.

"Also, the studies which we analysed looked at adults with healthy body mass index so additional work is needed to find out how this might affect people who are overweight"

The research also identified that being distracted when eating a meal leads to increased consumption of the immediate meal but has even more of an effect on later eating. Distractions, which include watching television, listening to the radio or music or reading a newspaper at the dinner table, impede a person's awareness of the food they are eating and results in over-consumption.

The research is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

###


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Food memories can help with weight loss [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 18-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Sarah Stamper
sarah.stamper@liv.ac.uk
01-517-943-044
University of Liverpool

Research led by a psychologist at the University of Liverpool has found that using memories of recent meals reduces the amount of food eaten later on. It also found that being distracted when eating leads to increased consumption.

Researchers analysed 24 separate studies which had examined the impact of awareness, attention, memory and distraction on how much food we eat. They found that remembering meals, being more aware and paying added attention to meals results in lower food consumption and could help with weight loss programmes.

Techniques such as writing down previous meals, using visual reminders of previous meals and keeping food wrappers were found to help with food memories and lead to a reduction in meal sizes.

Dr Eric Robinson, from the Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, said: "Our research found that if people recalled their last meal as being filling and satisfying then they ate less during their next meal. This could be developed as a new strategy to help with weight loss and maintenance and reduce the need for calorie controlled dieting.

"However, whilst techniques which remind you of what you have eaten reduce food consumption, some practical strategies to put these findings into practice need to be further developed.

"Also, the studies which we analysed looked at adults with healthy body mass index so additional work is needed to find out how this might affect people who are overweight"

The research also identified that being distracted when eating a meal leads to increased consumption of the immediate meal but has even more of an effect on later eating. Distractions, which include watching television, listening to the radio or music or reading a newspaper at the dinner table, impede a person's awareness of the food they are eating and results in over-consumption.

The research is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

###


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uol-fmc031813.php

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What would 501-day mission to Mars feel like? 'Survivor' in space.

Scientists and space enthusiasts are trying to discover how humans would manage missions beyond the moon. A proposed 2018 mission to Mars is adding urgency.

By Pete Spotts,?Staff writer / March 19, 2013

A drawing provided by Dennis Tito?s nonprofit Inspiration Mars project shows an artist?s conception of a spacecraft that would take a couple on a flyby mission to Mars in 2018.

Inspiration Mars/AP

Enlarge

For the Inspiration Mars project, it's the Red Planet or bust in 2018.

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The plan is daring, and the challenges enormous. Multimillionaire Dennis Tito wants to send a manned spacecraft on a Mars flyby, and to do it, he will need to find money and the right hardware. But perhaps most intriguingly, he will need to find two people willing to hurtle through space together for 501 days in a capsule roughly the size of an ice-cream truck.

The question of how to keep astronauts healthy and relatively happy once they leave Earth is one that has commanded the attention of the US space program for 50 years. Now, the Inspiration Mars project is adding some urgency to the issue of how to keep astronauts healthy and happy for a year or more beyond the comparative safety of low-Earth orbit.

If humankind is to become a spacefaring species, as Mr. Tito clearly wishes, it is an issue that must be addressed. Space travelers will have to cope with an environment that affects them on scales from the molecular to the physiological and psychological.

For now, space enthusiasts trying to simulate long-term space travel are cramming themselves into confined habitats for months on end to learn how to prevent a potential space mission from devolving into a zero-gravity version of "Survivor." Scientists are performing experiments in terrestrial labs, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is using the International Space Station to learn about how life in space affects humans ? from microgravity to the lack of a conventional day-night cycle.

The Inspiration Mars project ? if it truly gets off the ground ? will certainly not be for the faint of heart, especially for the crew.

"Once they've left planet Earth, they ain't getting off that bus," Jayne Poynter, president and cofounder of a company working on life-support systems for Inspiration Mars, wryly noted at the project unveiling last month.

Incredible advances are taking place in this field in space and on Earth, "all with the aim of decreasing risks and allowing humans to spend longer and longer periods of time in space," says Jeffrey Sutton, a neuroscientist at Baylor University who heads the National Space Biomedical Research Institute in Houston.

The challenge, he says, is that "You have very healthy individuals that are going into a very dangerous environment and also an environment where day-to-day living is different."

That environment includes increased exposure to cosmic radiation and communications that can take the best part of an hour to complete. But the Inspiration Mars project, in particular, has highlighted the prospect of spending long periods of time in cramped quarters. Initial plans call for a spacecraft and two crew members ? a male and female joined in a form of solitary confinement, if not matrimony ? living in a 33-cubic-meter capsule. Even a larger volume for living and storage wouldn't erase the issues.

To understand how astronauts might cope in such environments, researchers and those who train astronauts pay close attention not just to the experiences of past and current astronauts, but also to Earth-bound simulations ? a kind of near-Mars experience.

For instance, grumpiness can come easily with prolonged isolation, even when your "spaceship" or "habitat" sprawls across three acres, notes Ms. Poynter, chairwoman and president of Paragon Space Development Corporation, based in Tucson, Ariz.

She was one of eight people who spent two years and 20 minutes inside Biosphere 2, a vast structure on the backside of the Santa Catalina Mountains outside Tucson. The facility represented an experiment in designing and using a self-contained environment with a range of artificial ecosystems hospitable to plants, animals, and the crew.

Conceptually, it was the kind of large habitat one could envision as the nucleus of a colony on Mars. In practice, it often seemed a vehicle for turning molehills into mountains.

"There were mood swings; there was depression," especially moving into the third quarter of the mission, Poynter recalls. "We broke into warring factions, which is often common. In fact, for about 18 months of the mission, some of the crew members barely spoke to other crew members ? only enough to actually operate the Biosphere. It could have been dangerous, and it certainly affected the creativity with which we could address the challenges that we had."

Such experiences underscore the importance of screening and training a crew, as well as the people who will staff "mission control," specialists say.

Indeed, the move toward long-duration, deep-space missions is changing the traits recruiters will be looking for in astronauts, suggests Stacy Cusack, who leads the chief training officers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

A different kind of astronaut

This has already become apparent in the transition from two-week space-shuttle missions to six-month stays on the space station. In short, astronauts needed to be more MacGyver-like. The shift to interplanetary spaceflight will put an even higher premium on crew initiative and resourcefulness ? and on mission control's skills at sensing when a crew member might need additional support from the ground.

Ms. Cusack is that rare individual who already has been to Mars twice, in a manner of speaking. She spent two weeks as a crew member at one of the Mars Society's analogue Mars habitats in the Utah desert. Seven years later, she spent five weeks as a crew member at the society's analogue habitat on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic.

The simulations included communications delays similar to those a crew on Mars would experience ? up to 40 minutes between phoning home and learning whether anybody was home to take the call.

"We quickly learned that with the comm[unication] delays and the distance you're dealing with the crew has to be incredibly autonomous. They are completely relying on each other to get everything done. They can't wait for help from mission control all the time," Cusack says.

That may be a blessing for mission control, as well. During both simulations, she says, "it was very interesting to me to see how quickly you get into an us-versus-them mentality."

She cites the "case of the clogged toilet system" during her stint at the habitat in Utah. Effluent flowed into the habitat.

"That was a really low point," she says. The crew needed plumbing diagrams and troubleshooting tips from the mission-support team. From the crew's perspective, the support team was too slow to respond or the information was incomplete.

"Crew frustration built very, very quickly to a point where we started feeling like we weren't even going to keep them in the loop anymore," she says. "We'd just have to do it on our own and let them figure it out later."

This was the sort of "freebie malfunction" ? glitches not accounted for during training ? that turns simulated expeditions into object lessons for real-deal mission planning.

The habitat experiences also showed the crucial role crew selection plays in a mission's success. It's not enough to build a team of individuals who are smart and capable, Cusack says. "The way you put that team together is also a huge factor."

So is the selection of a team leader. Of the two Mars Society expeditions in which she took part, the more successful one was led by someone who was able to keep the crew working well as a unit without being a dictator and with a keen eye to balancing workload, she says.

In some respects, one could find many of these points in a decent book on how to be an effective manager, Cusack acknowledges.

"Everyone has those intentions in mind," she says. "But in practice, especially when things get stressful, everyone's base personalities come out. When you're living with the same people day in and day out with no break from them, ever, all those little personality quirks become enhanced."

In some ways, it may be easier to confront the stress of space travel than the stress of Earth-based simulations, suggests Taber MacCallum, the cofounder and chief technology officer for Paragon Space Technology Development Corp. He also was a member of the Biosphere 2 crew and is now Poynter's husband.

At Biosphere 2, Mr. MacCallum recalls, he'd look at the air lock to the outside world every day and remind himself: I'm not going out that door. Astronauts have no choice but to stay. During conversations MacCallum says he had later with some Russian cosmonauts who have spent long periods in space, they agreed that a daily decision to stay or go would be an extra level of stress. Currently, the record for the longest human spaceflight is held by Russian Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 days on the Mir space station in 1994-95.

Space station's role

The Earth analogues have their place in exploring the psychological dimensions of interplanetary space travel. NASA also participates in studies from a second remote training center on Devon Island. But NASA's primary tool for studying how a long-term space mission might affect astronauts is the space station.

To that end, NASA and Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, have tapped Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko to team up for the first year-long stay on the International Space Station. They will test hardware and procedures for interplanetary missions and take part in biomedical tests as the space agencies look for ways to keep crews healthy. The duo is slated for launch sometime in the spring of 2015.

The space station is a unique laboratory for understanding how the body responds to microgravity. That field of study has come a long way since the early days of human spaceflight, when flight surgeons were worried that astronauts wouldn't be able to swallow in space or that they wouldn't be able to digest food.

The human body evolved in Earth's gravitational embrace, so spending long periods in microgravity "tends to be a pretty disruptive kind of change," says Julie Robinson, NASA's space-station program scientist.

But, she adds, "it's not nearly as disruptive as people thought before humans went into space. Our bodies turn out to be much more resilient than we thought."

One facet that has received attention recently is the effect a lack of the right kind of light and the lack of a day-night cycle can have on sleep patterns and crew effectiveness. Earlier this year, researchers reported the results of a study of sleep patterns among a six-member crew that spent 520 days inside a simulated capsule at the Russian Academy of Science's Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow.

As time went on, normal sleep patterns were disrupted, but the severity differed among the crew and overall. Armed with a detailed look at the disrupted patterns, the researchers noted that mission planners could schedule activities in ways that reduced the risks the altered patterns could pose to the crew's effectiveness.

Researchers have developed counter-measures for long-observed conditions such as space-motion sickness or the loss of bone and muscle mass in orbit.

But they don't have enough experience with missions of nine to 12 months' duration to know what course those conditions might take over longer periods of time, Dr. Robinson says.

And spaceflight can still spring unpleasant surprises. Over the past couple of years, she says, some crew members have experienced a buildup of fluids in the brain and spinal cord that impairs their vision, a condition, she says, that could become permanent on the ground.

No one had seen this condition before, and it now represents the most serious health risk astronauts in low-Earth orbit face, says the National Space Biomedical Research Institute's Dr. Sutton. He adds that it has affected about 25 percent of the male astronauts who have served on the space station.

Cosmic rays and solar wind

For travel beyond low-Earth orbit and the protection of Earth's magnetic field, radiation remains the biggest health concern, Sutton says. Galactic cosmic rays ? charged particles and atomic nuclei accelerated to high energies ? come from all directions. The sun also sheds particles as solar wind, and at higher energies, as solar storms.

So far, the only ways to reduce a crew's exposure involve making the trip to Mars as quickly as possible and putting as much shielding between the crew and the source as practical.

Jonathan Clark, an associate professor of neurology at Baylor University and a former NASA flight surgeon, estimates that Tito's one-off Mars mission would expose the couple to an elevated risk of cancer mortality of about 3 percent above NASA's maximum allowable career exposure for astronauts.

It's a risk longtime Mars exploration advocate Robert Zubrin, founder and president of the Mars Society, compares with the risk astronauts faced during the shuttle program.

NASA initially anticipated that the risk of losing a shuttle and its crew was about 1 in 100,000. Over the course of 100 missions, NASA lost two shuttles and 14 astronauts. That suggests, he says, that the increased cancer risk to an Inspiration Mars crew would be roughly comparable to the risk astronauts took when they were strapped into a shuttle.

If Inspiration Mars succeeds, its biggest contribution to interplanetary travel may well be slaying a cosmic equivalent of the sea dragons lurking over the horizon for sailors in the Middle Ages, he says.

Fear of the dragon is the showstopper for NASA, he says, not the radiation itself. If Inspiration Mars succeeds, "it can destroy the fear. This can show it can be done."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/5SNWzMrXBGk/What-would-501-day-mission-to-Mars-feel-like-Survivor-in-space

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