Construction of the ISS

NASA

STS-116 astronauts installed part of the space station's main backbone in 2006.

In the movie The Martian, a stranded astronaut is able to survive for years in a habitat that NASA originally designed to last 30 days. The movie is fictional, but the premise is not so far from reality: a lot of the stuff that NASA designs ends up lasting well beyond its original expiration date--from Mars rovers to the Kepler Space Telescope.

From 1998 to 2011, five different space agencies assembled the the largest structure ever built in space. In the beginning, NASA thought the International Space Station would last through 2015. Well, it's 2015 now, and the station's 15-year anniversary just passed. It's holding up pretty well for such an old-timer. Could it survive another 15 years?

Over the past few years, the ISS's life expectancy has been extended to 2020, and then 2024. That gives us another 9 years to perform fun science experiments in microgravity and test out commercial spacecraft as well as technologies that could help us on a journey to Mars. But NASA may be able to squeeze even more years out of the space habitat.

A Life Beyond 2024?

Boeing, the primary contractor for the ISS, is in the midst of a feasibility study to see if the station could survive until 2028.

As the ISS orbits our planet, it gets baked by the sun on one side of Earth, then freezes on the other, darker side. Those thermal extremes can cause its materials to expand and contract, and that can lead to wear and tear. The docking and undocking of spacecraft also causes mechanical stress, says Brad Cothran, Boeing's director of sustaining engineering for the ISS program.

Nevertheless, the space station stands a good chance of surviving to 2028. "Right now we don't see any show stoppers," Cothran told Popular Science, though he adds: "There are things we're going to have to address."

Weak Points

With the constant addition of new science experiments on the ISS, the station's solar panels are going to need to collect more energy than ever. Unfortunately, they're looking a little haggard after their 15 years in orbit. Space radiation blackens the transparent glass over the solar cells, blocking some sunlight from entering, and every now and then small bits of space debris take out a string of solar cells.

When the space station was new, its solar arrays produced 220 kilowatts of power. By 2028, Boeing predicts they will only generate 160 kilowatts.

"We think we can get to 2028," says Cothran, "but it's something that we'll have address."

Even if the solar panels crap out, it wouldn't necessarily mean the end of the ISS. Boeing has an idea to overlay the old panels with newer, more efficient cells, should the need arise.

"Right now we don't see any show stoppers."

Then there's just the usual problem of technological obsolescence.

"The computers are already kind of outdated," says Daniel Huot, a NASA public affairs officer. "A lot of people rip on us for still using Windows XP on a couple of things." But he added that the electronics that the astronauts usually interface with are updated on a semi-regular basis.

The ISS's Internet connection could also be an annoyance in future.

"The station's primary objective is to perform science, but if you look at today's experiments--compared to 15 years ago, and compared to where we're gonna be in another 15 years--require much more data to come back down to the ground," says Cothran. "We're going to need more bandwidth."

Astronauts have mentioned the moderately slow Internet connection on the ISS. Boeing is working on getting it up to speed, and the will continue to fight to keep up.

"We're going to need more bandwidth."

But these are minor points that are relatively easy to fix or replace. In fact, says Cothran, the only thing that would really make the ISS uninhabitable would be if the hull of the space station threatened to breach, exposing astronauts to the deadly, freezing vacuum of space. But so far, so good.

"By 2028, the first elements of the space station will be 30 years old," says Huot. "[Boeing] just has to do the analysis, and they very well could come back and say more years are possible. It's not out of the realm of possibility."

Cothran agrees. "Right now, I don't see any reason why it can't keep flying beyond 2028."

International Space Station, Feb. 2010

NASA

A Stepping Stone To Mars

In the ISS's 15 years of operation, the biggest challenge, says Cothran, has been to maintain the regenerative life systems. Those are the systems that recycle water, provide oxygen for the astronauts to breath, and scrub carbon dioxide out of the air. These critical systems have gone through multiple generations of technology, and as a result of this learning experience, Cothran thinks a manned mission to Mars might actually make it there and back.

Likely the ISS will continue to be an important stepping stone to Mars. Life support systems, potential habitats, and other equipment astronauts might need to survive on Mars could be tested on the International Space Station. From there, the equipment would likely be tested on or in orbit around the Moon, before heading to Mars.

On the other hand, NASA is on a limited budget, and maintaining the space station costs about $3.5 billion per year. That's a lot of money that could be used to fund other science missions--including investing in technology that could carry humans to Mars.

If NASA decides not to inhabit the ISS beyond 2024, the space station would experience a fiery death as it plunges through the Earth's atmosphere on a controlled trajectory, to splash down into the ocean

"I hope that doesn't happen during my lifetime," says Cothran.

Twitter

Twitter announced today that the "fav" will turn into the "like," denoted by a tiny heart.

On Tuesday, Twitter announced it was replacing the ability to 'favorite' tweets, symbolized by a star, with a 'like' option, symbolized by a heart, on both Twitter and Vine.

The favorite, with its synonymous star icon, was introduced just after Twitter's launch in 2006, before Tumblr introduced their hearts in 2008, or Facebook introduced the 'like' button in 2009. Twitter product manager, Akarshan Kumar, explained in a blog post that "we know that at times the star could be confusing, especially to newcomers. You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favorite." Hence the change. They went on to say that in contrast to 'faving' with stars, "The heart...is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones. The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people. And in our tests, we found that people loved it." Hearts have become an integral part on Periscope, the Twitter-owned live-streaming app, and it appears the company wants to translate that success to their other networks.

However, some tweeters were very unhappy about the change of both the option's icon as well as its name.

Others, though, welcomed the change and the potential for social change that it could bring.

A few users made jokes on the subject, including NHL team, the Columbus Blue Jackets.

The intended purpose of the 'fav' was similar to that of a Facebook 'like', but many users treated the button as a bookmark, and are left wondering if they should continue that practice.

Or, perhaps the outlash over this change really signifies a greater frustration with Twitter itself.

What do you think of Twitter changing its 'favs' to 'likes'? Let us know by tweeting @PopSci!

The next big thing in transportation may be Next. The modular electric car design looks really nothing like a car, more like a boxy room on wheels, but it runs on roads just like any other car.

At least, that's the idea. There are no prototypes of Next yet, but the inventor, Tommaso Gecchelin hopes that the pods will start getting on the road in as little as five years.

Next, as Gecchelin envisions it, is an app-based transportation system. Just like Uber or Lyft, you would put your current location and your destination into your phone, summoning a Next module. You get in and sit down (or stand--the design includes plenty of head room, though seat belt laws might have something to say about that) and the module starts off. During the journey, it might link up with other modules, able to connect on the go to create one long module, with sliding doors between each compartment. As you continue on your way, you may be asked to switch cars as the autonomous algorithm figures out how to most efficiently get you (and everyone riding with you) to your individual destinations. Once you are safely ensconced in the departure car, the sliding doors close, your new car detaches, and you make your way to the end of your journey, all without stopping.

As an electric vehicle, Next relies on batteries, and may switch passengers from a car with low charge to a fully-charged car mid journey.

In the future, specialized modules containing coffee shops, bars, or restaurants could come to you, redefining 'food to go'. Constantly stopping a road trip to go to the bathroom? No more. Instead, the toilet will come to you. Need to get work done on the road? Special offices will make business trips all business all the time.

It sounds great--dining cars on every roadway! But will it really catch on? Besides the logistics of keeping hot coffee steady in a moving vehicle, there are some practical questions. Will it play nice with other cars on the road? Will it be easy? Will people be willing to pay for the extra services? How much will a ride cost?

People generally want their journey from point A to point B to be as simple and as fast as possible. Scenery and extras like food, beverages, and toilets are nice for long trips, but for day-to-day getting to the grocery store or commuting to work, you want to know that you can get there quickly and efficiently, without having to haul your bags or the kids from one car to the other during one of the signature module transfers. To that end, the company's website does propose having privately owned modules that can be shared with a select group of friends or family (with many people sharing the costs of upkeep). Whether or not that's an option that people will take to will depend in large part on the cost of the modules.

But even with some questions unanswered, it's a fascinating idea--and a road trip without constant bathroom breaks? Excellent.

Same Guinness, different filtration method

Morabito92 via Wikimedia Commons

If you’re a vegan or strict vegetarian and you’ve done your research, you have probably been steering clear of Guinness. That’s because, in order to make the 256-year-old Irish stout many of us know and love, brewers use a product called "isinglass" that is made from dried fish bladders. Now, after years of pressure from consumers, Guinness has announced that it will no longer use isinglass to filter its beer, and plans to build a new filtration system for that purpose in 2016. What sort of filtration system might that be, and why has it taken this long to start using it?

It’s important to know why Guinness needs to be filtered in the first place. During the beer’s fermentation, yeast gobbles up its starchy sugar source (all beers use barley for this, though a few add wheat as well) to carbonate the beer and create alcohol. But after the yeast has done its job, most beers have some remaining polyphenols, micronutrients left over from the barley or hops, which can make the beer look cloudy or turbid. “U.S. consumers would think there’s something wrong with a cloudy-looking beer—they may think it’s spoiled,” says Karl Siebert, a professor of biochemistry in the food sciences department at Cornell University. “It wouldn’t hurt anyone, and it doesn’t change the texture much. It’s just unappealing.”

Most beers go through some sort of filtration process before they’re served. For beers like cask ales and Guinness’ trademark stout, these compounds eventually settle out, but brewers have long looked for a way to speed up this process.

That’s where fining agents come in. Substances like gelatins or isinglass (a protein extracted from dried swim bladders of tropical fish) help form complexes between the unique types of cloudy proteins and leftover yeast in cask ales, which makes them heavy enough to settle to the bottom. Importantly, these fining agents speed up the settling out process without changing the beer’s overall taste or chemistry.

So Guinness brewers have used isinglass, possibly for all of the beer’s 256-year history, to bring the non-cloudy beer more quickly to drinkers’ pints. But in recent years, the vegetarian and vegan communities have demanded that the company drop isinglass from its production process.

For years the company has been looking for a way to satisfy vegans’ demands without alienating consumers used to Guinness’ clarity. And now it appears that it has found one. “We are now pleased to have identified a new process through investment in a state-of-the-art filtration system at St James’s Gate which, once in place, will remove the use of isinglass in the brewing process,” a Guinness spokesperson told Popular Science via email.

Since the spokesperson didn’t get into detail about this filtration system, we asked Siebert about other filtration methods used in the beer industry. One is simply another kind of fining agent called tannic acid (found in lots of different foods, the same compound that makes wine taste dry)—chemically, it works differently than the other fining agents, but it achieves the same end goal of speeding up the settling out process.

But the most common, Siebert says, is a one-two punch of adsorbent chemicals and physical filters. First, brewers will add an adsorbent agent, such as silica or PVPP, to the brew. Clouding proteins and leftover yeast will stick to the outside of the material, making them easier for the filter to catch. Then the beer will be run through a physical filter—for beer, this is often diatomaceous earth, soil made from fossilized microscopic organisms called diatoms. “Brewers use diatomaceous earth because it’s a very good filtration system to take out very sticky stuff like yeast,” Siebert says. But it’s hardly ideal—diatomaceous earth can’t be reused, it’s expensive to purchase and difficult to dispose of, Siebert says.

Unless Guinness has discovered a totally groundbreaking filtration method, the company is likely using one or both of these methods, Siebert says. “But it’s pretty hard to come up with something that works as well as a gelatin or isinglass,” he adds. It’s possible that Guinness is spending a little more on its filtration process so that its beer is clear and vegan-friendly, but that might actually make sense from a business perspective, if thousands of vegans worldwide suddenly become Guinness drinkers.

A glass sample that the researchers tested

Rosales-Sosa, Gustavo A., et al, Scientific Reports, 2015

As engineers continue to push what is possible for our buildings and gadgets, so too do they find new ways to tweak the properties of glass. Typically, glass is produced by heating minerals to a high temperature then letting them cool, but much of the glass that glistens on the sides of skyscrapers and makes up the screens on smartphones and tablets is made via special production processes that strengthen the material by adding metal. Now a team of Japanese researchers has found a way to add a version of aluminum to the glass using a novel production method, according to a study published last month in Scientific Reports.

To make super-strong glass, the researchers have long set their sights on alumina, an oxidized version of aluminum that happens to possess some of the strongest chemical bonds on Earth. Putting alumina in glass, the scientists hypothesized, would make the new material super robust. But in their first attempts, they struggled to produce it. When they tried to make glass with alumina in it, murky crystals of silicon dioxide would form on the glass against the surface of the container, so that the glass was no longer see-through.

But in this new study, researchers found a way around that by removing the container altogether. They developed a production method called aerodynamic levitation. If that sounds like a magician’s party trick, the real process is equally awesome—the glass and alumina mixture is held in the air as it forms, during which oxygen gas is pumped between the mixture and the surfaces of its container. Then, a laser acts as a spatula, mixing it as it cools. The resulting material contains more alumina than any other glass to date, and the researchers found it to be transparent and reflective. Most importantly, tests showed that the glass was very hard—harder than other oxidized glasses and most metals, and almost as hard as steel, Phys.org reports.

The researchers hope that aerodynamic levitation could make it possible to produce all sorts of other super-strong glasses. But for the moment, they’re still figuring out how to scale up the glass’ production, since right now aerodynamic levitation can only work in relatively small batches. When and if that happens, super strong glass might make its way to buildings and gadgets, making cracked cell phone screens a thing of the past.

Tesla Model X

Tesla Motors

The Tesla Model X all-electric SUV dropped on Tuesday, with the first few Signature Series vehicles being delivered to the earliest of early adopters. Most of the Model Xs reserved so far will be built and delivered to their new homes by late 2016.

But the Model X won’t have the electric SUV market all to itself for long. The Audi e-tron quattro debuted as a concept at the Frankfurt motor show in September. The company says it will be ready for the streets by early 2018.

Here’s how they stack up, keeping in mind that the Audi – while close to being the real deal – is still a concept, while the Tesla is rolling on the road already:

• Range: The Tesla gets an EPA estimate 250 miles per charge; the Audi is expected to get over 300.

• Power: The Model X has motors front and rear; the e-tron quattro has one front and two rear motors.

• Speed: The Model X P90D performance version with Ludicrous Speed can do 0-60 mph in 3.2 seconds; the e-tron quattro will do 0-62 mph in 4.6 seconds.

• Seating: The Tesla can haul up to seven people; the Audi holds four.

Pricing for the Audi e-tron quattro concept is nonexistent, and the price for the Tesla Model X is so far shrouded in mystery—though the $5000 required to place a reservation is not. But most analysts agree that the base Model X 90D should have a price tag somewhere around $80,000.

One more point of comparison: coolest feature. It’s hard to ignore the rear falcon doors on the Model X, which Tesla says makes it easier to access the rear seats. But the Audi e-tron quattro concept has wireless charging and Audi’s suite of self-driving software on board. If those make it to production, they could eclipse cool doors.

Apollo 8's famous Earthrise

NASA

Since its inception in 1958, NASA has accomplished some pretty spectacular feats of science. Our country has landed humans on the Moon six times. We’ve successfully put laboratories onto the surface of Mars, and we’ve flown by every single planet in our solar system, including the recently promoted asteroid-turned-dwarf planet, Ceres.

Despite decades of scientific and technological achievements, some people still think that funding NASA is a waste of money. However, when you do the calculations, it turns out we are actually getting a great value from this government-run agency.

What NASA Gives Us

We can thank the Cold War for NASA’s existence in the first place. After the launch of Sputnik in 1957, President Eisenhower realized we were losing the space race. So, on July 29th, 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was born. Upon signing the Space Act, Eisenhower said this about the new program: “There are many aspects of space and space technology which can be helpful to all people as the United States proceeds with its peaceful program of space and exploration. Every person has the opportunity to share through understanding in the adventures which lie ahead.”

For 57 years NASA has provided the world with new perspectives on our species and our place in the cosmos. After the Apollo 8 mission sent back the famous “Earthrise” image, we were able to see ourselves for the first time. There we were, a beautiful blue ball, where everyone lives. Then on Valentine's day in 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft turned around on its way out of our solar system, and took the ultimate family portrait. This time, from a distance of 3.7 billion miles away, we were tiny, just a speck among the stars. It was because of moments like these that for decades when children were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, they answered, “an astronaut!” This dream only existed because of NASA.

Gorgeous, super hi-res image of Pluto

NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

The colors have been enhanced to highlight Pluto's variety of compositions.

Recently, the world was united once again in the spirit of space exploration as the New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto. Always the underdog of the solar system, and discovered only in 1930, we never really knew what Pluto looked like; it is 3 billion miles away, after all. On July 14th it seemed as though the world stopped; people tweeted, Facebooked, and cheered on the streets while humankind accomplished something great. And while no one could see the spacecraft, we all watched in awe as the nine-year journey came to a close and we flew past Pluto, only to find out it was more interesting than anyone could have ever imagined.

The Price Of Awe And Amazement

Getting inspired by science and discovery is one of the most rewarding parts of being a human. But exploring isn’t free, especially not in the space case. What is the price of awe and amazement?

Since the end of the Apollo program in 1972 NASA has operated with an average 0.5 percent of the total US budget. That’s not even a percent of the total 3 trillion dollars allocated to the U.S. in 2014. Although that may still seem like a lot of money, let’s compare it to the beginning of the Apollo program.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy decided that NASA would send humans to the Moon before the end of the decade. At that time, each U.S. citizen was paying $20 per year to NASA. JFK needed that number to go up to $26 a year to help get our astronauts to the Moon. In 2015 dollars, the Apollo era budget would have been equivalent to each American paying over $200 a year to the space administration. If NASA still had that sort of funding in 2015, that would make its budget a whopping $65 billion dollars per year, compared to its actual budget of $17.5 billion. Instead, in 2014 each American paid an average of $54 per year to NASA.

That money gets spread out over many different projects. So even though the Curiosity rover had an astounding $2.6 billion price tag, each citizen only paid about about $0.41 per year to put the SUV-sized robot on Mars.

The Real Cost Of NASA Missions

Katie Peek/Popular Science

Since 1972, NASA’s budget hasn’t increased, but has been cut by roughly 75 percent, and it’s stayed that way for 42 years. While the Apollo era budget was arguably not sustainable, it raises questions as to what might be possible if NASA once again had access to more financial support.

NASA has made a little bit of money go a long way. In addition to organizing science missions, the space agency employs over 60,000 people including private organizations. But NASA can’t do it all. Budget cuts are delaying the development of the Commercial Crew program, which would get astronauts launching from American soil again. In the meantime, we’ll be forced to continue buying tickets on the Russian Soyuz.

NASA's budget has flatlined in recent decades

Simon Porter

What Lies Ahead

Despite its ongoing budgetary battles, NASA continues to do good science.

Next on the horizon for NASA’s space exploration agenda is a flyby of Europa. The mission to Jupiter’s icy moon has created a lot of excitement for astrobiologists. Because Europa has more water in its oceans than all of the water combined on Earth, it has the potential to harbor life.

There won’t be another “Apollo moment” for our space program.

The quest to land humans on Mars in the 2030’s is also something scientists at NASA are trying to plan for.

It’s widely accepted that there won’t be another “Apollo moment” for our space program. NASA will probably never receive the amount of funding it did when JFK set his sights on the Moon. There also probably won’t be another Cold War, but there will always be this question: What else is out there?

We’ve barely scratched the surface of the solar system--there are so many more questions, and many more questions we don’t even know we have. The price of understanding is small, and for people around the globe to feel connected over a rocket launch, a rover landing, a photo, or a spacewalk is priceless. Let’s not stop. Let’s keep pushing forward and as NASA says, let’s continue to “dare mighty things.”

Some patients received Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) like this. Others just got some electrodes stuck on their heads.

JanneM via Flickr

Many factors can cause obesity, including genes, lifestyle and environment. But there’s some evidence to suggest that quirks of the brain might be a factor, too. In fact, doctors may be able to stimulate the brain so that patients lose weight, according to a study published today in the journal Obesity and led by researchers from the National Institutes of Health.

The idea that obesity can be controlled with the brain shouldn’t be that surprising—everything from appetite and cravings to self-control is funneled through the brain, even if the signals are coming from the stomach. Past studies have shown that obese people have less activity than lean people in a particular region of the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for behavioral planning and making decisions. That suggests that people who are obese might have trouble quieting signals that come from more primal parts of the brain that tell them to keep eating, even if they want to lose weight.

The researchers thought that if they could stimulate the brains of obese patients, maybe they would be able to lose weight. The researchers chose nine obese patients who were each staying at the facility for two eight-day stints. On the first visit, patients were all given sham transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a method in which low-amplitude current is sent to the brain through electrodes stuck to the scalp—in the sham version, patients are hooked up to the machine but no electricity comes out. But during the last three days of the second visit, five patients were given active tDCS, and the other four were again given sham tDCS. Then, all patients were allowed to go to the vending machine and pick whatever food or drink they wanted. The researchers found that the patients who received active tDCS consumed an average of 700 fewer calories than they had during their first hospital stay, and lost an average of 0.8 pounds.

To the researchers, these results provide an early indication that tDCS might help obese patients lose weight. And though this is a small study with only modest results in weight loss, officials are desperately looking for new treatments and solutions as reports estimate that the United States is spending billions of dollarsper year on treating obese patients.

Scientists still have a lot of questions about how obesity affects the brain's function. Next, the researchers plan to more directly compare patients who receive tDCS and those who do not to better understand the treatment’s effectiveness and safety.

Detail, Princess Leia In Force Awakens

Lucasfilm / Disney

Behold the new faces of the Star War! Next month, Disney releases The Force Awakens, the seventh installment of the juggernaut space opera series, and today there are new official posters focusing on the characters. Conspicuously absent from the posters is Luke Skywalker, original trilogy protagonist played by Mark Hamill. Also, in all the posters the characters are covering up their right eye. Is this a weird tribute to late R & B artist Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes? No one knows! Check out the posters below:

Astronaut

NASA

Astronaut Chris Cassidy during a spacewalk on the ISS.

What child hasn't dreamed of becoming an astronaut? Now, you can. Starting on December 14, NASA will begin accepting applications for the astronaut class of 2015.

NASA currently employs 47 astronauts, eight of which were selected as candidates during the last application process, in 2013. With the last space shuttle launch in 2011, there have been precious few opportunities for those 47 to head into space. Some have never gotten the chance to leave the Earth's atmosphere. So why start looking for new astronaut candidates?

Because NASA hopes that the next decade will involve many more space flights and they want to be ready. The Soyuz is still shuttling people back and forth to the International Space Station (ISS). Boeing and SpaceX are jockeying to be the first commercial enterprise to carry astronauts to space in 2017, and NASA's Orion capsule is scheduled to leave on its first crewed mission in 2021. It takes two years of rigorous training before an astronaut is deemed ready to fly, and NASA wants to bolster the astronaut numbers now. Considering that each astronaut candidate must endure space station systems training, flight training, learning the Russian language, and going through a survival course, preparing early makes sense.

And the job doesn't get any easier once you become a bona fide astronaut. "Becoming an astronaut is not the achievement, you're asking for a lot more work," astronaut Anne McClain said in an interview on NASA TV. "You have to recommit to your dreams 100,000 times to make them come true."

The last application process netted over 6,000 applications, and of those only 8 were selected. Only 8 to 14 people are expected to be selected in this next class. Every application that goes into NASA is reviewed by at least two representatives in the Astronaut Selection Office. The process is a long one, involving references, medical exams, and interviews for the 'highly qualified' candidates. The class of 2015 won't be announced until June 2017.

In order to become an astronaut, a candidate must be a United States citizen with at least a Bachelor's degree in a science, technology, engineering or math field. They also have to have at least 3 years of experience working or teaching in a scientific field, or 1,000 hours of flight time in command of a jet. They also need to have 20/20 vision (laser-corrected vision is ok), good blood pressure, and be between 62 and 75 inches tall.

There's only one question left: Do you have what it takes?

Security screening area at Denver International Airport

Danpaluska, via Wikimedia Commons CC0 1.0

In a couple weeks, the Transportation Security Administration, best known as the TSA, will finally be old enough to sign up for an account online. Born in the months immediately after the September 11th attacks, the TSA is meant to serve as a shield against future hijackings, it’s blue-gloved agents and security gates are supposed to be barriers through which no threat can pass. But frankly, it is terrible at its job. Yesterday, Inspector General John Roth testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and his verdict on the TSA was brutal.

From his statement to the committee:

Our testing was designed to test checkpoint operations in real world conditions. It was not designed to test specific, discrete segments of checkpoint operations, but rather the system as a whole. The failures included failures in the technology, failures in TSA procedures, and human error. We found layers of security simply missing. It would be misleading to minimize the rigor of our testing, or to imply that our testing was not an accurate reflection of the effectiveness of the totality of aviation security.

The majority of the Inspector General’s recommendations aren’t disclosed because the“recommendation includes Sensitive Security Information,” some changes are obvious. The Inspector General’s statement and testimony both noted that while the TSA is required to conduct manual reviews of aviation worker records, “due to the workload at larger airports, this inspection process may look at as few as one percent of all aviation workers’ applications.”

The hearing comes on the heel of reports, like this one from September, on auditors ability to get weapons through TSA checkpoints. While the unclassified summary of the report doesn’t specify just how easy it was for the auditors, at yesterday’s hearing Missouri Rep. Stephen F. Lynch said, “I would use pathetic in looking at the number of times people got through with guns and bombs, in these covert testing exercises. It really was pathetic, by which I mean pitiful, the number of times people got through. Just thinking about the breaches there, it’s horrific.”

Identifying the problem is the first step to fixing it. Still, 13 years into increased airport security, it’d be nice to know that existing security measures work.

[Ars Technica]

DSCO App

VSCO

VSCO's app for making gifs DSCO has released. On iPhone, that is. Android users will have to wait.

The VSCO Cam app brought added filters and granular controls not found in regular photography apps. Now, with DSCO, the company is setting its sights beyond stills and towards moving images. What makes DSCO worth considering is that it’s exactly as easy as Snapchat—in both good and bad ways.

Welcome to the DSCO.

Upon opening the app from the Visual Supply Company, users are treated with a fluid, blackish background. The on-boarding process of the app is simple if you already have a VSCO account, dreadful if you don’t. But after you create an app and choose your desired url, you never have to worry about logging in again. From then on, opening the app brings you straight to the camera view. Which is where the fun begins.

Much like Snapchat, holding the camera button records footage while releasing marks the end of your creation. Once finished, the gif will autoplay and loop, allowing you to swipe between VSCO’s filters. If the ease of use is the best thing about the DSCO app, the filters are a close second.

DSCO provides one of the quickest ways to make gifs on the fly. And unlike Apple’s Live Photos, users are able to specifically choose which 5 seconds is being recorded for Harry Potter picture-like goodness. But the app isn’t without its faults.

Like Snapchat (for some people), the interface of VSCO’s gif app can be cryptic. Where Snapchat errs on the side of playfulness in its user interface, VSCO succeeds at being as minimalist as possible. Which is appreciated, but I often found myself trying different touchscreen techniques to navigate. The same is true—if not more so—in the VSCO cam app itself, where you can find all your past DSCO-made gifs.

Which is actually half-true. More accurately, the gifs you’ve grabbed are automagically sent over to VSCO and viewable on your profile page. Meaning the gif above, the one below and every other shot I’ve recorded can be found on there. Even though I would’ve preferred to keep them to myself, every finished product is simultaneously sent to VSCO and saved to the device. And there’s no option to turn this off. For those really wanting to stay off-the-grid, using the app in Airplane Mode gets around this.

DSCO Profile

VSCO

All gifs made through DSCO are automatically uploaded to VSCO's social site. Switch on airplane mode if you're really worried

But it’s not all bad. The process of saving your work to your phone yields a gif format image and a video (.mov) file. The more options the merrier—especially for those moments you can’t get back. DSCO app, despite the hangups, is my new selfie camera.

Because I’m on iOS. Unfortunately the app has yet to release on Android and may not come anytime soon, but a representative of VSCO has told Popular Science that, “we have plans for a DSCO Android release but haven’t confirmed timing just yet."

With new apps like DSCO and Instagram’s Boomerang joining old favorites like Snapchat and Vine, there are plenty of options when capturing photos, videos and a blending of both. But the low friction/high effectiveness lends to explaining why the image format is so popular. The ability to quickly apply filters and turn real moments into gifs is something everyone can admit is important—even if we’ll always argue on how to pronounce the damn thing.

Jetman From An Airliner

Screenshot by author, from YouTube

Jetpacks are here, but they’re unevenly distributed to a couple of guys who love doing stunts in Dubai. French daredevil and pilot Yves Rossy, also known as “Jetman”, has flown over the Grand Canyon and in Rio de Janeiro, but he seems to have really found a home in the skies above the United Arab Emirates. Rossy, not content to simply dance in the sky with his protege Vince Reffet, now flies alongside an Emirates Airlines Airbus A380. Like this:

And this:

It’s hard to say how much of the spectacle exactly is an ad (for Emirates Airlines and/or X Dubai, the "action sports" tourism company whose account the video was posted on), but it’s delightful nonetheless. I imagine if I took a $30,000 for a 16 hour flight, I’d expect a little airshow at the end too. Watch the full video below:

[The Verge]

What happened to Mars' atmosphere? Was it ever like Earth's? NASA will answer these questions and more in a press conference today, being livestreamed on its UStream channel at 2 pm.

According to their press release, the participants of the conference will be:

• Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters

• Bruce Jakosky, Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) principal investigator at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado, Boulder

• Jasper Halekas, MAVEN Solar Wind Ion Analyzer instrument lead at the University of Iowa, Iowa City

• Yaxue Dong, MAVEN science team member at LASP

• Dave Brain, MAVEN co-investigator at LASP

After the conference, there will be a Q&A session with the media, as well as a social media component by tagging questions with #AskNASA.

Billions of years ago, Mars might have looked a lot like Earth. It had vast amounts of water on its surface, and it was wrapped in a nice thick atmosphere. Now, after losing 99 percent of its atmosphere, the red planet is cold, dry, and brutal. What kind of cataclysm could cause such a transformation?

To find out, NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission) spacecraft is orbiting the red planet and studying the thin wisps of atmosphere that remain. MAVEN just got to Mars about a year ago, but the spacecraft is already teaching us a lot--enough to fill 49 scientific papers, in fact. Today, 4 MAVEN papers were released in Science, and the other 45 came out in Geophysical Research Letters.

The latest data support the hypothesis that charged particles from the sun--especially those burped out during coronal mass ejections-- helped to lay waste to Mars' atmosphere long ago.

Mars once held more water than the Arctic Ocean

NASA

Like a toddler, our young sun was very active and tumultuous. Back then, its roiling surface regularly blasted out huge bursts of gas and magnetic field in coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The charged particles erupting from those CMEs streamed outward toward the planets.

"We know younger stars are more active," David Brain, a space physicist on the MAVEN team, tells Popular Science. "Younger stars have more solar storms, and more intense storms. Mars was probably being bombarded by these storms early in its history."

Lucky for us, Earth's magnetic field repelled the brunt of those particles. Mars wasn't so lucky. Although the planet once had a protective magnetic field, it disintegrated at some point. As a result, the charged particles from the CMEs crashed into Mars' atmosphere like a tsunami wave.

Scientists have long suspected those crashing waves of CME particles might have played a role in degrading Mars' atmosphere. Now, thanks to MAVEN, they can finally estimate how large that role was.

When charged particles from the sun smack into the molecules in Mars' atmosphere, they energize the molecules enough that they can zip away from the planet.

"Mars was probably being bombarded by these storms early in its history."

"What we wanted to do is understand whether the solar storm really made a big dent in the atmosphere," says Brain.

By observing Mars' atmosphere before and after a CME in March, the MAVEN team found that the CME made Mars' atmosphere escape 10 times faster. And this wasn't even a particularly big solar storm.

Nevertheless, "today's solar storms are like windows into what Mars may have been subjected to billions of years ago," says Brain. "A long time ago, when these events were more intense, it might have been the dominant way that Mars was losing its atmosphere."

Meteorite impacts may have also blasted away parts of Mars' atmosphere, while solar wind--the charged particles that regularly stream from the sun--probably eroded the atmosphere more slowly. And it doesn't help that Mars doesn't have a whole lot of gravity to hold onto those atmospheric molecules. But so far, it's still not clear how important each factor was in the Martian cataclysm.

"Today's solar storms are like windows into what Mars may have been subjected to billions of years ago."

The loss of Mars' protective magnetic field was likely a key factor, but scientists aren't sure how that happened. Perhaps MAVEN, which is also measuring the remnants of Mars' magnetosphere, will turn up clues as to what happened.

Now that we have an estimate for how much damage the Martian atmosphere can suffer from a medium-sized solar storm, the team wants to learn how larger and smaller storms influence the escape rate.

"We want to know how those numbers go up or down as the sun gets more or less active," says Brain. "Once understand how numbers vary, we can really extrapolate back in time."

The egg of the parasite Hymenolepis nana

Tomas De la Rosa via Wikimedia Commons

In Colombia in 2013, a man showed up to a hospital with a confusing array of symptoms. He was gaunt, having lost a lot of weight in the past few months. He was HIV-positive and hadn’t been taking his medication. He was fatigued, with a fever and a cough. Stool samples revealed that he was carrying the parasite Hymenolepis nana, a common type of tapeworm; strangely, a scan showed cancer-like nodes in his lungs and lymph nodes.

His doctors weren’t sure how to diagnose the man—the cells looked and behaved like cancer, but they weren’t the man’s own cells. The cancer seemed to be from another multi-celled organism. The disease progressed and 72 hours after he was admitted to the hospital, the man died.

Doctors determined that the man died from his tapeworm’s cancer—the first such case ever reported, according to the study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. And that’s got some scientists asking questions about how much we know about what causes cancer in the first place.

Scientists have known for a while that some infectious agents such as parasites can cause cancer. Two types of parasitic flatworms that live in the liver have been connected with increased incidence of cancer in bile ducts found in the intestines; another called Schistosoma haematobium can be ingested through water and is known to cause bladder cancer. The hypothesis is that these parasites can cause inflammation in the host’s tissues, which causes them to reproduce faster and increase the likelihood of a mutation.

But this case is different—the cancer was in the parasite’s cells, not the man’s. To see what might have caused the tapeworm’s cancer, the researchers compared the genes of the worm’s normal and cancerous cells. The researchers found that several of the genetic mutations in the cancerous cells occurred in the same genes as malignant mutations in human cells.

That not only shows a level of biological commonality, one researcher told NPR, but this case also shows how cancerous cells can spread out of control when the immune system is compromised.

This strange case raises even more questions about possible misdiagnoses of cancer in developing countries, and about the role of the immune system in fighting or protecting the body against cancer. “The host–parasite interaction that we report should stimulate deeper exploration of the relationships between infection and cancer,” the study authors write.

And though the doctors weren’t able to act quickly enough in this case, answering these questions might lead to better cancer treatments in the future.

Google Cardboard

Jonathon Kambouris

Can’t get enough of “life” in three dimensions from the big screen? There’s now an option within an app for that. Following in the footsteps of movie theaters everywhere, Youtube has created a new format for 3D viewing.

That could mean some cool innovation for content creators in the future, as people mess with camera angles and have the chance to play smarter tricks on your eyes.

What’s more, all of Youtube’s library (even the 2D content) can function like 3D content too, thanks to a new option in video playback.

Things like base jumping, helmet cams from the bravest of climbers, scuba diving, or even a play-through of the new Halo game all will feel just a little more real. This definitely changes things for the adventure videos and first-person shooter gaming categories.

Here’s the catch (there’s always one with such a drastic change): you’ll need Google Cardboard, a sort of low-quality housing for your phone that lets you switch mobile video to a format that, through the viewer, will let you see things with a sense of depth. Cardboard gets its name from the material used in the base models; Google apparently wants to preserve the charm of blue and red 3D glasses--and maybe the price point.

If this sounds like something pretty old and unoriginal, that’s probably because it’s essentially an updated version of a nearly 200-year-old technology: the stereoscope.

Remember those lenses that created an optical illusion, whereby looking at two identical photos next to one another your eyes thought the image was in three dimensions? Same technology.

The real innovation here is that Google has created a “Cardboard” format for all of their video content--all of it--that means with one of these devices you can drop your phone in, play the video, and watch it in 3D.

If you’re not a big fan of watching videos on your phone, there isn’t a quick fix for your laptop yet. The technology works because Cardboard can control a lot of variables, and once you get outside of those, it gets a lot more expensive to render video in an additional dimension.

But while we wait for the next advance, it’ll be fun to go back and re-watch all those wing suit videos and deep sea explorations. And maybe avoid using Cardboard on anything that’s not family friendly.

Fallout 4's Great War

Screenshot by author, from YouTube

America’s favorite apocalypse returns next Tuesday. Today Bethesda released the launch trailer for Fallout 4, the eighth game exploring the post-nuclear wasteland. Moving the series away from the West Coast where most of the games took place, and north of Fallout 3’s District of Columbia, Fallout 4 puts our new protagonists just outside of Boston. And in the grim darkness of this alternate near-future, it looks like the greatest danger is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Earlier this summer, Bethesda released the smaller Fallout Shelter game for mobile devices. The game played in the familiar genre of resource management. Players, with a small starting base and a few survivors, had to expand a vault that could sustain a growing population, while keeping the residents safe from hostile raiders of radioactive cockroach infestations.

It was a good tool for building anticipation. The Fallout universe, and every game in the series, is defined by centuries of isolation before returning to the world. The vaults are a nuclear war survival strategy, much like the ones built during the early days of the Cold War. Fallout’s Great War, canonically set on Saturday, October 23rd, 2077 lasted hours at most. The lucky few who made it into vaults survived the apocalypse. Those who didn’t perished or worse. With Fallout Shelter, players manage time inside their little isolated caves, with populations never greater than 200, waiting until the world is safe to reinhabit.

On Tuesday, it becomes so again. Players will get to experience the first few minutes of warning on Great War day, and then hide safely in the vault with whatever they found, before picking up the plot 200 years later. In rebuilding civilization after a collapse, players will get to build and manage settlements of their own.

Hazards of this new world will include not just other desperate survivors and post-apocalyptic monsters, but androids known as “synths”, who appear tied to the fate and identity of whatever became of MIT.

Watch below:

ISS Solar Array

NASA

How long does it take to get a broken cooling system back to normal? If it's on the International Space Station (ISS), it might take three years.

On Friday, astronauts Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren will perform a six and a half hour spacewalk. Both astronauts made their spacewalk debut last week on October 28.

This time, they will return to finish repairing a cooling system that started getting repaired in 2012. The initial repair was troubleshooting an ammonia leak. In 2013, the leak returned prompting more spacewalks. Now, three years later, Kelly and Lindgren will return the cooling system to it's original configuration.

Scott Kelly has now lived in space longer than any other American, however while this marks the ISS's 190th spacewalk, this will only be Kelly's second one.

The spacewalk can be watched live here beginning at 7:15 am eastern time.

Federal Correctional Institute in Sheridan, Oregon

sbeebe, via Wikimedia Commons CC By 2.0

The challenge: preventing a quadcopter from landing inside a prison like this.

Legal drone delivery may still be a ways off, but quadcopters have been smuggling contraband into prisons for years now. Quadcopters are cheap enough and powerful enough to carry a few pounds of goods, like cigarettes, knives, cell phones, or drugs over a prison fence, and they're sometimes even recovered from the drop to do it again. Prisons, which understandably don’t want drones to do this, are now looking for ways to keep the robots out.

The Bureau of Prisons is a division of the Justice Department boasting responsibility for 198,953 inmates, primarily those who have committed federal crimes or those who are imprisoned in Washington, D.C. They oversee only 7.5 percent of the roughly 1.5 million total prisoners held in the United States. Yesterday, they posted a “Request for Information” (which is basically the formal bureaucratic way an agency window shops before deciding to pursue a contract). Specifically, the Bureau is looking for “Protection from Unmanned Air Vehicles.”

Here’s how they describe the threat:

Recent advances in unmanned air vehicles have presented a new and evolving threat to the BOP’s mission. From small devices of less than a pound that can provide unauthorized imagery and surveillance to larger systems that can carry 20 or more pounds of contraband, these devices represent a new and unprecedented challenge for BOP personnel.

There’s concern too about airspace where friendly and hostile drones may both be flying. And the hostile drones can take on a whole host of characteristics. While not expecting any drones heavier than 55 pounds, the Bureau of Prisons is worried about those flying at altitudes from ground level to 18000 feet, traveling from 0 to 328 feet per second, smaller than 4 feet in all dimensions but otherwise variable in body type, built from anything between carbon fiber to light metal alloys, and commercially available models as well as custom-built drones.

To protect against drone smugglers like this, the Bureau wants to detect them at a mile away, track them at three-quarters of a mile, and either destroy or intercept them as close to that as possible. They’ll need to stop directly piloted drones, as well as ones flying pre-programmed routes, even autonomously and maybe even using GPS.

There is one small advantage on the side of the Bureau. They note that the “Surveillance target [prison] is generally isolated in the middle of an open area with limited ground clutter and other interfering sources such as people and [radio frequency]. There may, however, be roads where vehicular traffic is moving within the zone of interest.”

Companies that think they have an answer should submit questions to the Bureau of Prisons by December 1st. If protecting prisons from drones is anything like the growing military field of anti-drone weaponry, expect a lot of cameras, jamming guns, and maybe even lasers. The answer might even be counter-drones themselves.

[Via Gizmodo]