Lockheed Martin, via NASA

Quiet Supersonic Transport X-Plane Design

From NASA: "This is an artist’s concept of a possible Low Boom Flight Demonstration Quiet Supersonic Transport (QueSST) X-plane design. The award of a preliminary design contract is the first step towards the possible return of supersonic passenger travel – but this time quieter and more affordable."

Sound killed the supersonic airplane. While increasingly confined to memory, the British Aircraft Corporation’s Concorde was the first commercial jetliner to offer supersonic travel to time-crunched transatlantic travelers starting in 1976. It continued for decades before it was retired in 2003. Supersonic is not hard to do, strictly, but it’s very loud, so the Concorde found itself flying mostly over oceans, without people to disturb below. NASA recently restarted its x-plane program, and the first concept they've previewed is supersonic and quiet.

The concept is dubbed the “Low Boom Flight Demonstration Quiet Supersonic Transport” or “QueSST” (somehow). Today NASA announced that they’d awarded defense giant Lockheed Martin a $20 million contract for 17 months of preliminary development on the concept. The end goal of the project, according to NASA, is “A piloted test aircraft that can fly at supersonic speeds, creating a supersonic 'heartbeat'--a soft thump rather than the disruptive boom currently associated with supersonic flight.”

If NASA can get companies to figure out quiet supersonic flight, it could, pardon the pun, create a new boom in air travel, as flight again gains the speed and convenience that distinguish it from other travel. If companies can match the roughly 1300 mph speed of the Concorde, quiet supersonic jetliners could make the trip between New York and Los Angeles in just a couple of hours. And military aircraft flying at supersonic speeds without the accompanying noise would be harder to detect.

NASA aims to have the flying part of the program start in 2020. If it's successful, we might not even hear about it.

CDC

The deer tick, a vector for Lyme disease.

In infectious disease news:

The first case of Zika virus transmitted in the U.S. was confirmed earlier this month, and it was transmitted through sexual contact. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced confirmation on 9 new sexually-transmitted cases, as well as an investigation into 10 more. There’s still a lot we don’t know about the virus, including whether or not it causes birth defects.

Meanwhile, some Ebola survivors are struggling with neurological problems.

And new research suggests that a previously unknown bacterium may cause Lyme disease, in addition to the bacterium we already knew causes the illness. Read more from Melinda Wenner Moyer at Scientific American.

In agriculture news:

Stephen Hall has a great longread at Scientific American about how gene-editing tools—particularly the much-hyped CRISPR-Cas—may be used in agriculture (paywall).

Speaking of Scientific American, there is also a good feature on curbing antibiotics on the farm. And speaking of antibiotics on the farm, Maryn McKenna has a frightening write-up about agriculture’s role in last-ditch antibiotic resistance at her NatGeo Germination blog.

And here’s a good piece on how complicated the GMO food fight can get—particularly in Boulder, Colorado. It's by Luke Runyon for Harvest Public Media.

In creepy crawly news:

The Zika outbreak led to a series of think pieces on whether or not we should eradicate mosquitoes once and for all. Daniel Engber argued for total obliteration at Slate. Melissa Cronin explained why that’s not such a great idea at Motherboard.

Meanwhile, Rose Eveleth imagined a future totally devoid of mosquitoes at her podcast Flash Forward.

And two teams of scientists sequenced the bed bug genome, which may eventually (as in, probably not any time soon—sorry) help point to new ways to kill the pest. For more, read my piece at The Verge.

Macieklew via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0

United States Capitol With Scaffolding

The United States Capitol, with scaffolding erected to facilitate restoration work on the dome. February 2015.

Apple’s lawyers are going before Congress tomorrow to fight a big battle on unfavorable ground. One of the San Bernardino shooters has a locked iPhone, and the FBI would really like to get past the password to see what’s on it. If the FBI guesses wrong 10 times, however, a security feature on the phone (an iPhone 5C, in this case) might wipe the phone’s memory, leaving no trace of what information it once held. The FBI wants Apple to create a software update, just for this phone, that turns off the auto-wipe security feature, so that the FBI can continue to guess passwords until they find the right one, and the FBI have a court order requesting Apple do this. Apple, as they have argued since the initial request, and explained in detail during a call for media on Friday, doesn’t think the laws can conscript them into writing software that undermines the entire premise of secure cryptography.

Today, Apple’s general counsel Bruce Sewell is testifying before the House Judiciary committee to make that case. The full prepared remarks are roughly 900 words trying to expand the fight from one specific terror case to the entire security infrastructure of the internet. "Apple has no sympathy for terrorists," Sewell opens, before moving onto the specifics of the case:

We have the utmost respect for law enforcement and share their goal of creating a safer world. We have a team of dedicated professionals that are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year to assist law enforcement. When the FBI came to us in the immediate aftermath of the San Bernardino attacks, we gave all the information we had related to their investigation. And we went beyond that by making Apple engineers available to advise them on a number of additional investigative options.

And then it transitions to the heart of the case: creating an encryption bypass for one devices undermines all similar devices.

The FBI is asking Apple to weaken the security of our products. Hackers and cyber criminals could use this to wreak havoc on our privacy and personal safety. It would set a dangerous precedent for government intrusion on the privacy and safety of its citizens.

Hundreds of millions of law-abiding people trust Apple’s products with the most intimate details of their daily lives – photos, private conversations, health data, financial accounts, and information about the user's location as well as the location of their friends and families. Some of you might have an iPhone in your pocket right now, and if you think about it, there's probably more information stored on that iPhone than a thief could steal by breaking into your house. The only way we know to protect that data is through strong encryption.

To drive the point home to the elected officials listening, Sewell points to the government’s own efforts to guarantee safety through encryption.

Every day, over a trillion transactions occur safely over the Internet as a result of encrypted communications. These range from online banking and credit card transactions to the exchange of healthcare records, ideas that will change the world for the better, and communications between loved ones. The US government has spent tens of millions of dollars through the Open Technology Fund and other US government programs to fund strong encryption. The Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, convened by President Obama, urged the US government to fully support and not in any way subvert, undermine, weaken, or make vulnerable generally available commercial software.

Will the appeal stick with Congress? It's hard to say. The hearing is scheduled for Tuesday at 1 pm Eastern. Tune in to C-SPAN3 then to see firsthand if the arguments work.

[via The Verge]

Mariordo, via Wikimedia Commons CC BY 2.0

Google Autonomous Lexus

Lexus RX450h retrofitted by Google for its driverless car fleet

This past Valentine’s Day, at the corner of El Camino Real and Castro Street in Mountain View, California, a Google autonomous car got into an altercation with a bus. Previously, human-driven cars have hit Google's autonomous cars, but this appears to be the first incident in which an autonomous car is at fault for an accident.

The Google AV test driver saw the bus approaching in the left side mirror but believed the bus would stop or slow to allow the Google AV to continue. Approximately three seconds later, as the Google AV was reentering the center of the lane, it made contact with the side of the bus. The Google AV was operating in autonomous mode and traveling at less than 2 mph, and the bus was travelling at about 15 mph at the time of contact.

The Google AV sustained body damage to the left front fender, the left front wheel and one of its driver’s-side sensors. There were no injuries reported at the scene.

This is a familiar scenario for anyone who’s ever tried navigating around an obstacle in their lane, but couldn’t because of fast-flowing traffic in the lane next to them. The bus driver, like all cars in the lane adjacent to the Google car, likely had the right-of-way, though it’s reasonable to assume some courtesy would leave the lane open for a stuck car to pop in, get around an obstacle, and then get out.

According to a Google report set for release tomorrow obtained by The Verge human kindness is what the Google car was counting on, to let it merge into the lane. Instead, when the car attempted to drive around the obstacle it met commuter indifference, with a thud.

View the traffic report here.

Now you can not only have the whole world in your hands, you can have the Moon orbiting the Earth, orbiting the Sun. Jason Allemann of JK Brickworks designed a working orrery, a partial model of the solar system, out of Lego bricks. The movements of the mechanical Lego model can be controlled by a hand crank or a small motor.

Alleman calculated the turning of the gears so that the movement of the miniatures is just about accurate. The Earth spins on it's axis, mimicking each day. The moon orbits the Earth once every 28 "days", and the Earth-Moon system makes a full rotation around the sun once every 375 days, slightly more than the 365 (or 366) day years we normally have, but still really impressive for a model made out of Legos.

If you want to build it yourself, the model plans are available on the JK Brickworks website.

JK Brickworks

Orrery

The working Lego orrery.

Mechanical orreries have been around for hundreds of years, used to map out the motions of the Earth, Moon, Sun, and other planets in relation to each other.

Wikimedia Commons

Orrery

An Orrery designed by Andreas Bösch, built in 1653.

The Lego orrery and the older clockwork orreries may be able to keep the timing of the celestial orbits accurately (or almost accurately), however they are vastly off in terms of scale. Models of the solar system that are to scale require vast amounts of space.

Skateboarders are known for risking bodily harm for great stunts. But this latest one puts almost all others to shame. Today, Guinness World Records announced that a new record has been established: fastest speed recorded on an electric skateboard, a staggering 59.55 mph (95.83 kph) achieved by Mischo Erban, a 32-year-old Czech-Canadian longboarder.

As seen in a video published by Guinness World Records today on YouTube (and above), a well-padded, helmeted Erban takes several nasty spills going at speeds that are better suited to a car. These various attempts and the final record-establishing run were performed last November on a flat runway at the Portorož airport in Piran, Slovenia, giving Erban enough space to speed up and slow down. The record was measured over a distance of 328 feet (100 meters).

The electric skateboard used in this case is a model called the Nextboard. It's manufactured by a startup company of the same name and isn't available for purchase by consumers — yet (you can sign up for email updates on the company's website). Guinness says it is "4-wheel drive," with motors in all four wheels, and has a range of 6 to 9 miles (10 to 15 km).

Guinness tells Popular Science there is no previous record holder for the fastest electric skateboard run (this is the first time such a thing has been measured by the organization), but Erban previously set the Guinness World Record for fastest downhill skateboard run at 80.74 mph in 2012.

Correction: this article originally erroneously transposed the MPH and KPH values. We have since amended the error and regret it.

NASA

If you squint harder you can see into the future

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly gazes out of a window of the International Space Station.

This afternoon, astronaut Scott Kelly will say goodbye to the International Space Station. It's a smelly tin can in low Earth orbit, but it's been Kelly's home for 340 days.

To help NASA predict how going to Mars will affect human health, Kelly lived on the ISS for just shy of an entire year--double the length of a normal space station stay. He and his twin brother, Mark, who remained back on Earth, have been subjecting themselves to blood tests and other measurements to determine how long-term spaceflight alters the immune system, microbiome, mental health, and more.

Although Kelly will return to Earth this week, NASA's "Year In Space" isn't over quite yet.

Testing

Almost as soon as Scott Kelly gets out of the Soyuz capsule, he and his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Kornienko, will be submitted to a slew of tests.

"They'll be going through a variety of different tasks that look a lot like what you might have to do if you had just landed on the surface of Mars," said International Space Station Chief Scientist Julie Robinson in a NASA video. Like going through an obstacle course, they'll try climbing ladders, opening hatches, connecting valves and tubing, and getting back up after falling--tasks that are relatively easy for most of us, but which can be tough after you've been living in microgravity for a year.

During these tests, Kelly will be wearing motion sensors on his arms, legs, and chest, says Stevan Gilmore, the lead flight surgeon on the mission. The motion sensors help measure how well Kelly can perform the tasks compared to before he left Earth. They'll also be comparing his performance to that of past astronauts.

Over the course of Kelly's mission, NASA has been testing techniques to try to combat some of the health risks of living in space. For example, in space, the body fluids seem to concentrate in the upper body, which not only causes a permanently stuffy nose, but could be related to the vision problems that some astronauts develop. During Scott Kelly's mission, the team has been testing Chibis--basically a pair of vacuum pants meant to suck the fluids down into the legs.

NASA

Scott Kelly wearing Chibis

These vacuum pants pull an astronaut's body fluids toward his legs. Scientists hope the device can prevent the vision problems that many astronauts experience as fluids flow toward the head. Also makes a great fashion statement.

Similarly, NASA's ARED device is an exercise machine that simulates the resistance of gravity with the intent of helping astronauts combat muscle loss.

Once the astronauts get back on the ground, their performance in the landing tests will reveal whether countermeasures such as these helped, and/or would be useful during a trip to Mars.

More testing

In the first few days after landing, NASA doctors and scientists will need to take more samples from the Kelly twins. Then there will be more data collection at 30 days, 45 days, 60 days, and up to 9 months out for some genetic tests. Plus, many of the biological samples taken Scott Kelly on the space station are still up there, waiting for the next SpaceX capsule to carry them to Earth in April.

John Charles, the chief scientist of NASA’s Human Research Program, says he expects the bulk of the study results to be published about a year from now.

Other tests could go further out than 9 months. NASA scientists will probably want to review the twins' annual physical exams and bone loss measurements, the latter of which can go out for several years.

"If they lost bone, it can take up to three years to recover," says Robinson.

Rehabilitation, and more testing

After the Soyuz capsule lands in Kazakhstan, Scott Kelly and his doctors will get on a 20-hour flight to Houston. After that is when the reconditioning begins. The space station exposes astronauts to gravity that's 10 percent weaker than that of Earth, and despite exercising for a few hours a day, Kelly will likely have lost some muscle mass.

Astronauts coming back from a six-month stay on the ISS usually get rehab, with daily workouts and targeted exercises, for 45 days. And even though Kelly has been up there for twice as long, lead flight surgeon Stevan Gilmore thinks he'll require the same 45 days to readjust to life back on Earth.

Apple's battle with the FBI over unlocking an iPhone used by a San Bernardino mass shooter has finally reached Congress. Apple's lawyers outlined their defense yesterday to the House Committee on the Judiciary Hearings, and the trial officially starts today.

Apple very publicly refused to create a backdoor into iPhones after a judge ruled that they must do so. The tech company then went one step further and filed a motion to close back doors into iPhones forever.

The trial is scheduled to start at 1pm ET. Watch the Congressional hearing live in the link above or on CSPAN.

What better way to wash down a burger and fries than with a hearty serving of fresh virtual reality content? That seems to be the thinking out of McDonald's Sweden, which recently announced a new promotional Happy Meal box that can be quickly turned into a makeshift VR headset.

The approprietly-yet-ominously named "Happy Goggles" is a variant of the classic McDonald's red-and-yellow, smiling Happy Meal cardboard box, which is now celebrating its 30th anniversary. Except diners can easily re-fold this version along strategically placed perforated lines to form a cradle for their smartphones (sold separately).

Once inside the Happy Goggles box, a smartphone can display VR content from supported apps and games. In this case, the first game specifically designed for the Happy Goggles will be "Slope Stars," a virtual reality ski simulator endorsed by the Swedish National Ski Team, which will be available for download starting March 4.

It's extremely close to the idea employed by Google Cardboard, Google's DIY virtual reality headset (only that one doesn't come with any fast food inside — at least not yet).

The Happy Goggles VR box will begin rolling out to the 220 McDonald's locations throughout Sweden this month, and McDonald's seems convinced it's a good idea for diners, especially the young audience that Happy Meals are designed to please. The company even cites two psychologists in its press release, writing: "It creates an opportunity for adults to learn from the children’s knowledge and experience. The gaming can also be a good, joint activity that makes it easier to hang out - on equal terms," says Karl Eder and Fadi Lahdo, licensed psychologists. Sadly, the company doesn't provide any advice for how diners are supposed to ensure the structural integrity of any VR headsets doused with food grease.

It's easy to write all this off as just the latest example of McDonald's chasing fads in its Happy Meal tie-ins. (Remember the Teenie Beanie Babies of the '90s?) Yet if it does prove popular with diners, the move could encourage more adoption of lite VR content by companies outside the tech and entertainment spaces. Right now, Happy Goggles are confined to McDonald's locations in Sweden, but they could possibly expand to other countries as well, as a McDonald's exec told Adweek.

Screenshot by author, from YouTube

DJI Phantom 4 Quadcopter

This is the first DJI Phantom to come without racing stripes.

Drones are better behind the camera than in front of it. Dronemaker DJI today unveiled the latest in its Phantom series of camera-toting quadcopters, the Phantom 4, and did so with a video that features the quadcopter, but mostly as an incidental feature. It’s what the drone is filming, not the drone itself, that is the sales pitch here. The drone is a tool for a filmmaker, an entire aerial crew that frames shots, dodges obstacles, and captures magical moments from above, for up to 28 minutes at a time.

A video, dubbed “Your Creative Sidekick,” shows the drone filming people mostly outdoors, in picturesque settings. It has tap-and-go navigation, where a user can point at a location on a map and the drone will fly to it. There are shot framing options, whereby users can use the screen on the controller to select an area for the drone to film. It has auto-tracking, wherein the user selects a person or vehicle to follow, and the drone focuses and flies along filming it. The Phantom 4 also has obstacle avoidance: Its forward-facing cameras detect obstacles at 50 feet, while downward-facing cameras capture“optical and sonar data.”

Phantom 4 offers a top speed of 45mph. Consumers can preorder it at DJI’s own site or at Apple stores. When they do, they should probably register it with the FAA. It's priced at $1,399.

To announce the launch of the Phantom 4, DJI released 4 videos. There’s one about the drone’s technology, a profile of a slackliner who films his exploits by drone, and one about a wilderness wildlife rescue in Quebec that uses drones to track down missing animals.

Watch the fourth video, about using the Phantom 4 as a “creative sidekick,” below:

Georgia Tech

Emergency Robot

Should you trust a robot in an emergency?

Should you trust a robot in an emergency? That depends on the robot.

Researchers from Georgia Tech Research Institute decided to see whether people would accept the authority of a robot in an emergency situation. For the most part, people did, even when placed in an emergency situation, giving the team results that might as well have been dreamt up by writers of The Office.

The team asked over 40 volunteers to individually follow a robot labeled “Emergency Guide Robot”. The researchers had the robot (which was controlled remotely by the scientists) lead them to a conference room, but in a few of the cases, the robot first led the test subjects into the wrong room first, where it travelled in circles. In others, the robot stopped and participants were told it had broken. After getting the volunteers into the conference room, the researchers filled the hallway with smoke, and set off a smoke alarm, placing the untrustworthy robot outside the door.

“We expected that if the robot had proven itself untrustworthy in guiding them to the conference room, that people wouldn’t follow it during the simulated emergency,” said Paul Robinette, an engineer who conducted the study. “Instead, all of the volunteers followed the robot’s instructions, no matter how well it had performed previously. We absolutely didn’t expect this.”

Instead of leading them to the closest, clearly marked exit that the volunteers entered the building from, the robot led volunteers back to a different exit in the back of the building, and occasionally, even to a darkened room blocked by furniture. The humans showed a stunning level of trust in a machine that clearly hadn't earned it.

“We wanted to ask whether people would be willing to trust these rescue robots,” Alan Wagner, a researcher with the study said. “A more important question now might be to ask how to prevent them from trusting these robots too much.”

While these robot guides were controlled by humans, and were purposefully doing a bad job, someday in the future, robots might function as helpers in emergency situations, aiding in evacuations and similar predicaments. While this could be a wonderful help, the fact is, sometimes robots break, and as this study indicates, it's still a good idea for people to think for themselves. After all, the machine might not always know best.

Xavier Harding

Apple Vs FBI

Apple and the FBI continue their debate about unlocking an iPhone 5C belonging to a shooter who was part of the San Bernardino attacks

The Apple-versus-FBI debate continued today in front of Congress. The FBI retrieved an iPhone belonging to one of the shooters involved in the San Bernardino, California shooting. The FBI believes that information crucial to the case can be found on the smartphone, but, without the device’s passcode, is unable to access it. With Apple refusing to provide a new version of their software that allows the FBI to hack the iPhone more easily, matters have been taken to Washington.

The director of the FBI, James Comey, presented his case to Congress as to why he and his team deserved to get into that phone with Apple’s help. Along with lengthy banter about William and Mary College, Comey explained why using the All Writs Act from 1789 was a viable way to get Apple to open up the phone.

In a court decision yesterday, New York’s Judge James Orenstein sided with the tech company. Now Congress seems to have Apple's back as well.

Many are concerned with the matter of precedent in this case. As representative Bob Goodlatte and other house members mentioned, this could set a bad precedent for any case involving a device with encryption. To which Director Comey agreed that yes, “it will potentially set a precedent.” Later on in the hearing, representative Ted Poe asked about the number of other phones the FBI may have that they’re looking to break into. “I don’t know the number," answered Comey, "A lot."

Many are troubled that the FBI is using the San Bernardino case as a scare tactic to convince the American people that we need to strongly consider the idea of backdoors into commonly used devices. But “bad cases makes bad laws” as Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren pointed out.

The hearing was full of cringeworthy moments for Director Comey. But the Directors refrain on the whole matter could be summed up with one quote. When questioned about the dangers of a backdoor into Apple’s iPhone, Comey responded questioning the notion of a backdoor. "I don’t see this as keys and backdoors. There’s already keys and doors on the phone, take the guard-dog away and let us pick the lock.” Comey mentioned the metaphor once again to Representative Poe, “Take away the drooling watchdog and give us time to pick the lock."

In Case You Missed It...

Apple and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have found themselves at a impasse. The government agency has requested that Apple lower the security of one of their iPhones involved in the San Bernardino shooting. The smartphone in question, an iPhone 5C, was previously owned by one of the shooters: Syed Farook. The FBI has the phone, but it’s passcode protected. After 10 wrong attempts to guess the code, the phone will wipe itself clean.

The FBI has asked Apple to create a version of the iPhone’s software that would allow an unlimited number of tries—enabling the government to try every combination until landing on the right one. To this, Apple responded no.

Cupertino offered their help in the San Bernardino case by providing cloud data they had on their servers belonging to Syed Farook, but took a stand, saying unlocking the iPhone like this would provide a great risk to all iOS users. The existence of a backdoor into the iPhone would mean malicious hackers could get their hands on the weakened software Apple provides the FBI, and everyone's iDevice would be susceptible to lowered security.

Some have said Apple’s choice to not provide the FBI with a backdoor into the iPhone is a publicity stunt. The idea that iPhones have unbreakable security would only serve to bolster Apple’s image. Even if Tim Cook’s stance is a PR move, it’s gotten other tech companies to follow suit. Companys like Amazon, Facebook and Google have filed letters to the court claiming they stand alongside Apple in this matter.

Congress Realizes The Importance Of Strong Encryption

It wasn't the entire house in favor of privacy and encryption. Some such as Trey Gowdy and Hank Johnson sided with the director of the FBI. "My colleagues are advocating for an evidence-free zone," Gowdy mentioned.

But Gowdy's colleagues like Ted Deutch realize the inherent danger of creating any digital tool. "Once the tool is created, the fear is that it might be used by others." In the world of software where data can be copied an infinite number of times, this is a worthy argument.

California's own representative Judy Chu continues to put the onus on the FBI. "Safe manufacturers are not required to keep keys to safes or locks." Chu continued, "It's clear technology is outpacing the FBI's capabilities."

The majority of representatives present realize the importance of encryption. And, Congressman Jerrold Nadler pointed out, ruining encryption for every iPhone user means little if criminals will just resort to using stronger methods of secret-keeping. As he pointed out during the hearing, "Once you have holes in encryption, it's not a question of if, but when."

NASA/Robert Markowitz

Seeing double

Twins Scott Kelly and Mark Kelly have been part of NASA's twin study this past year.

Scott Kelly returns to Earth later today, after spending 340 consecutive days in orbit (the most of any American). Over the coming months, NASA scientists will continue to analyze the countless vials of blood, swabs of DNA, and various body scans that Kelly and his twin brother Mark have provided this past year. While Kelly’s year in space is plenty enough to warrant a study of the physiological functioning of every organ in his body, the fact that NASA has been able to simultaneously study his twin brother makes the study that much more powerful.

Twins present scientists with a unique opportunity. In fact, they are in such high demand by scientists that an annual twins fair is held in Twinsburg, Ohio, where scientists set up booths hoping to attract twins to their studies.

When scientists first started studying twins, they relied on the basic premise that twins shared either some or all of the same genes, and were raised in similar environments. They often used twins to study the health effects of certain habits, like smoking or dietary habits, or to see if a certain treatment worked well. For example, back in the 1970s, Linus Pauling theorized that vitamin C could effectively cure the common cold. To test out the idea, researchers recruited sets of identical twins and for 100 days had one twin take a vitamin C supplement and the other take a placebo. In the end, they either both ended up getting colds or neither of them got sick, disproving Pauling’s theory.

Studying identical twins can better determine whether a certain trait, illness, or disorder is influenced more heavily by genetics or by the environment.

But in recent years, twins have been providing even more powerful data. Identical twins, also called monozygotes, have exactly the same genes. But as they grow, identical twins, while they still often look strikingly the same, can develop subtle differences: One twin grows a few inches taller than the other, or one twin has a distinctively different weight or facial feature that makes it easy to distinguish from the other twin. But because they share the exact same genome, scientists attribute these differences to the environment. So by studying identical twins, researchers can know with more certainty how the environment interacts with our genes and affects our health and how we look--a concept known as epigenetics. The basic idea behind studying identical twins is that the results can better determine whether a certain trait, illness, or disorder is influenced more heavily by genetics or by the environment.

Flckr CC by Ruth L.

Identical twins

Identical twins help scientists better understand how epigenetics influences our health.

While the environment has only small effects on certain traits like height, epigenetics has been found to strongly influence many kinds of cancer, autoimmune diseases, and psychiatric disorders. By following identical twins over long periods of time, researchers can find out which genes and which environmental factors together may cause a certain disease to arise.

For NASA, this change in environment is crucial. As identical twins, Scott and Mark Kelly share exactly the same genes, but for the past year, their environments have been completely different. Scott has spent the past year in a very atypical, microgravity environment, while Mark has spent it in a much more natural environment here on Earth. All the while, NASA has been running almost every medical test they can on both of them. So when they analyze the results, they will attempt to better understand the effects that long term space travel has on the human body.

With an exact genetic replica to compare the results to, the researchers can be more certain whether it was the environment or the genes that are causing these differences.

Flckr CC by chintermeyer

Non-identical twins

Twin studies often study both identical and non-identical twins to better understand whether or not, or how much, a disease or trait is influenced by genetics.

Non-identical twins, also known as fraternal twins, are important, too. Just like any siblings, they share 50 percent of the same genes but they are also the same exact age, so studying them is better than studying say a sibling because age can be take out of the equation. However, some of the most powerful twin studies actually study both identical and non-identical twins in the same situation. If both identical twins and non-identical twins are just as likely to have a certain trait or disease, the chance that that trait is influenced solely by genetics is much less.

In NASA’s case, the study size is as small as it gets when it comes to twin studies, with just one pair, and they don’t have any non-identical twins to compare them to. Further, there are some other variables that need to be taken into account; the Kelly twins didn’t eat the same food all year and food is known to influence the gut microbiome, which NASA is studying.

However NASA's twin study is a first-of-its-kind study and will hopefully guide scientists to find out how Scott Kelly's genes have been influenced by his year in space, and could ultimately make spaceflight safer.

Paramount Pictures

USS Enterprise

Watch out for stray anti-hydrogen atoms

Humankind may dream of one day traveling to other star systems like Captain Kirk, but in reality we can barely figure out how to make it to the next planet over. The fastest we've ever flown in space was during Apollo 10 at speeds of about 25,000 mph. At that speed it would take 165,000 years to reach the nearest star system. So if we're really serious about leaving the solar system, a bigger gas tank is probably not the solution.

Gerald Jackson, a former Fermilab physicist, thinks antimatter could propel us to the nearest star system in 10 years or less. For more than a decade, Jackson and his colleague, physicist Steven Howe, have been trying to get NASA and other investors to pay attention to their idea for an antimatter propulsion system. Now, Forbes reports, Jackson and his colleagues are appealing directly to the public. This month they plan to launch a $200,000 Kickstarter to get things going.

Could it work?

Antimatter is a lot like regular matter, only instead of its atoms having a positively charged nucleus with negatively charged electrons buzzing around it, antimatter atoms have a negatively charged core orbited by positively charged particles.

When antimatter and regular matter come into contact, the atoms destroy each other and release lots of energy in the process. It's that energy that Jackson hopes to harness.

That's an extreme long-shot, though and there are some major obstacles to overcome first.

For one, someone needs to figure out a way to generate large amounts of antimatter. As Forbes reports, Jackson's design would require 17 grams of anti-hydrogen to reach the nearest star. Although particle accelerators have managed to create antimatter particles, it's only been in miniscule amounts. And it could cost $100 billion or more to produce each gram of the stuff.

Second, storage is an issue. If it bumps into the sides of its containment vessel, a gram of antimatter could create an explosion the size of a nuclear bomb. To date, scientists have managed to contain anti-hydrogen for only about 16 minutes at most.

If Jackson's team can somehow bring his antimatter sail concept into reality, he estimates it'll propel spacecraft at velocities as high as 40 percent of the speed of light.

The design would use antimatter to induce a fission reaction. During this reaction, uranium would split into two "daughter" byproducts. One of the daughters flies forward, striking into a sail and propelling it forward, similar to wind behind a sailboat. The other daughter particle would shoot out the back of the spacecraft, creating another source of thrust.

That's how it works on paper, anyway. The first $200,000 crowdfunding goal would help the researchers build a device to measure how much thrust the system puts out in reality. From there, they're hoping to attract larger investments from NASA and other business partners. They estimate it would take $100 million total to build a working prototype of the antimatter engine.

With any luck, that should be ready to fly within about 250 years--just in time to be incorporated into the first USS Enterprise.

Rodney Campbell/Flickr

Monarch Butterfly

The monarchy is back. Well, at least the monarchs are.

The amount of monarch butterflies staying in Mexico this winter went up dramatically, increasing in area by 255 percent over last year. Populations of monarchs are measured in acres due to their migration patterns. In Eastern North America, monarchs spread across the United States and Canada in the warmer months, but migrate back to Mexico as winter approaches, clustering back into a small section of forest. Their populations coat the trees and branches so thoroughly that researchers measure the area of land covered instead of trying to count individual butterflies.

This year, the area spreads to cover almost 10 acres, a dramatic increase from the 2.8 acres that the butterflies occupied last year. That's optimistic news for researchers hoping to see the population once again meet its 1996 peak of 44.5 acres. The monarch population hit its low in the winter of 2013 and 2014 when the area covered by butterflies was a slender 1.6 acres.

“We are seeing the beginning of success,” Daniel Ashe, director of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, told the New York Times. “Our task now is to continue building on that success.”

Monarch butterflies continue to face threats, mostly a decline in habitat in Mexico due to illegal logging, and a loss of their preferred food, milkweed, along their route through North America.

SpaceX

Falcon 9 and SES-9 payload sit ready on the launch pad

Photo was taken on February 28.

A SpaceX launch that was planned for tonight has been scrubbed until Friday at the earliest, due to high winds.

The company explained with more detail on its site:

Unfortunately upper-level winds continue to exceed acceptable limits and are expected to get worse as we approach tonight’s launch window, so we are forgoing today’s launch attempt. Winds are forecast to exceed acceptable limits through Thursday. Our team will continue working with the Air Force’s Launch Weather Officer to evaluate the best available opportunity for flight in the coming days.

This would have been the fourth attempt to launch the SES-9 satellite into orbit--a mission that has been long delayed due to the June 2015 explosion that left SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket grounded for several months.

Although SpaceX has been insisting that the rocket and spacecraft are perfectly fine, the company has been particularly finicky about the launch conditions. Because of the delay in launching the satellite, the Falcon 9 rocket will carry the satellite higher up, getting it closer to its destination to make up for lost time, so the company will need every drop of fuel it can spare to attempt landing the rocket booster on a barge ship after the launch.

Courtesy of Monica Butler, Rebecca Van Sciver and Jiwon Woo

Stabilimentum

Fitbits on our wrists, sensors in our shoes, rings that message us—wearables are all the rage. But what if wearables were alive? That’s the kind of question Mónica Butler asked when she put an orb-weaver spider on her face. Her creepy-crawly facemask was part of her team’s exhibition from the Biodesign Challenge course at University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) this fall.

Several student teams from BDC’s pilot semester took their inspiration from humankind’s original wearable—the microbiome, the billions of microbes that live in and on us and help digest food, process nutrients and may even affect our moods. Instead of microorganisms, the teams went big—they focused on larger organisms.

Butler and her teammates Rebecca Van Sciver and Jiwon Woo called their spider mask Stabilimentum, Latin for “support.” The couture device cleans the air the wearer breathes using live spiders and the electrostatic properties of their silk. Inspired by the relationship between humans and microbes, the fashion accessory creates a symbiotic relationship between human and arachnid (Check out the team’s projects on UPenn’s class website and on BDC's site).

Interestingly, students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s BDC course this fall envisioned a parallel product using genetically engineered plants and an aeroponic growing system to deliver fresher air to the wearer. Clare Severance, Maria Michails, Sean Concannon and Dan Seel imagined their Personal Oxygen Device (P.O.D.) doubling as a fashion-forward accessory and a greenhouse for edible microgreens for snacks on the go. Check out their project here.

Courtesy of Clare Severance, Maria Michails, Sean Concannon and Dan Seel

P.O.D - Personal Oxygen Device

Meanwhile, others focused on microbes that call human skin their home. Rebecca Hallac and Vincent Snagg at UPenn created a smart bracelet, called Probiome, that automatically sprays surfaces with customized probiotics containing Staphylococcus epidermidis, bacteria that protect the skin from pathogens. The team developed a functional version that pairs with a computer keyboard to prevent MRSA infection in hospitals.

Projects like these are just a sampling from BDC’s year of biodesign. Check back next week for more highlights from the first semester of student projects.

Fruzsina Eördögh

Mouse

That's one stressed mouse.

Long-term stress can have lots of effects on the body—it can cause chronic muscle tension, heart problems, and fertility issues in both men and women. Now researchers have performed a new study in mice that they believe reveals another effect of chronic stress on the brain: Inflammation, which can lead to memory loss and depression. The researchers published their study today in the Journal of Neuroscience.

In the study, the researchers stressed out several mice by periodically putting a much more aggressive mouse into their cage. After six days of exposure, the stressed mice could no longer recall the location of a hole to escape a maze, which they remembered easily before the stressful period began. "The stressed mice didn't recall it. The mice that weren't stressed, they really remembered it," said Jonathan Godbout, a neuroscience professor at Ohio State University and one of the study authors in a press release. For four weeks after the trauma, the mice continued to cower in corners, the mouse equivalent of social avoidance, a major symptom of depression.

The researchers suspected that the stress was affecting the mice’s hippocampi, a part of the brain key to memory and spatial navigation. They found cells from mice’s immune system, called macrophages, in the hippocampus, and the macrophages were preventing the growth of more brain cells.

The stress, it seemed, was causing the mice’s immune systems to attack their own brains, causing inflammation. The researchers dosed the mice a drug known to reduce inflammation to see how they would respond. Though their social avoidance and brain cell deficit persisted, the mice had fewer macrophages in their brains and their memories returned to normal, indicating to the researchers that inflammation was behind the neurological effects of chronic stress.

This isn’t the first study to point out the connection between chronic stress and memory loss, or between inflammation and depression. But it provides a new, promising link between all four. That could help doctors prescribe more immune-focused treatments for conditions like anxiety and depression, some of which are being tested now, as the New Scientist reports.

Aerojet Rocketdyne

Artist Rendering Of New Rocket Engine

From Aerojet Rocketdyne: "The U.S. Air Force selected Aerojet Rocketdyne and United Launch Alliance to share in a public-private partnership to jointly develop the AR1 engine, shown above in an artist rendition."

We are living in a golden age of rockets, as private companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic experiment with new rocket bodies for astronomic deliveries. Yet this golden age is built on the bones of a previous era of spacecraft hurling. Or at least, if not the bones, the rocket engines.

United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between defense giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing, has for years delivered military satellites into space using rockets powered by old Russian engines. With Russian spare parts no longer politically viable, ULA's looking for a new rocket engine, and on Monday, the Air Force announced a big investment to help Aerojet Rocketdyne create one.

Political Turmoil

ULA uses Atlas V rockets, designed with Russian-built RD-180 engines in the first stage. This is a side-effect of the end of the Cold War, a way for American companies to harness Russia’s military/industrial know-how that led to satellites. ULA notes that: "The RD-180 relationship was urged by the U.S. government as a means of preventing Russian military technology from proliferating."

Geopolitical winds have changed since the late 1990s and early 2000s. Following Russia’s capture of Crimea from Ukraine, its support for violent separatists fighting against the Ukrainian government, and Russian support for the Assad government in Syria, relations between the two countries aren’t as cozy as they once were. Congress banned Russian rockets from being used in Defense Department launches in a 2015 bill, although the ban was overridden in the 2016 spending bill. Politicians are continuing to argue over the ban.

Meanwhile, the Air Force still needs to launch reconnaissance and geopositioning satellites into space. SpaceX and other space newcomers are promising, but ULA has a proven track record and a bunch of rockets already in production. If Russian engines won’t do, the answer is to create a domestic alternative and "buy American".

An American Alternative

California-based Aerojet Rocketdyne is developing an RD-180 alternative, the AR-1, which they plan to have ready by the end of 2019. Previously, Congress allowed the Air Force to invest only tepidly in the program, with just $220 million authorized in 2014. Now the Air Force is putting up $536 million, to be matched with $268 million from Aerojet Rocketdyne themselves, meaning a total of $804 million to make this rocket engine work at least as well as the Russian engine it's replacing.

From the announcement:

“AR1 will return the United States to the forefront of kerosene rocket propulsion technology,” added [Eileen Drake, CEO and President of Aerojet Rocketdyne]. “We are incorporating the latest advances in modern manufacturing, while capitalizing on our rich knowledge of rocket engines to produce a new, state-of-the-art engine that will end our reliance on a foreign supplier to launch our nation’s national security assets.”

The liquid oxygen/kerosene-fueled AR1 booster engine uses an advanced oxidizer-rich staged combustion engine cycle and will be available for commercial sale to any U.S. launch provider. AR1 will be the nation’s first domestically produced oxidizer-rich staged combustion kerosene engine.

The Air Force also invested a smaller sum for ULA to build its next-generation, all-American BE-4 engine, which would be used to power its Vulcan rocket.

Peretz Partensky, via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0

Man With Gas Mask And AK-74

Note that his finger is on the trigger, even though this isn't a life-or-death situation. This is poor trigger discipline.

Daily life is a data-rich environment. After a crime, a natural place to look for evidence is the suspect’s social media accounts, to see if there are any useful nuggets buried among empty ephemeral nothings. Fortunately, there are tools for just this sort of thing. Last month, security researcher Justin Seitz explained how to make a software tool that can find guns in pictures. Yesterday, he released a how-to guide for feeding that same tool to social media posts.

First, the why: People post everything on social media. Much of social media is, by its very nature, public and searchable. Which means that when people get new gifts, they’re often eager to share them online with their friends but also with complete strangers. On Christmas morning, 2015, Iraq war veteran Brandon Friedman started retweeting pictures of people showing poor trigger discipline. That is, pictures people post with their finger on the trigger, in situations that aren’t life-or-death. He attached the hashtag #GetYourFingerOffTheTrigger, and many of the tweets can still be found online. The main risk of putting a finger on the trigger is that the person may accidently fire the gun, which can lead pretty directly to horrific things.

With people posting the guns they opened as presents, it’s pretty easy to find, but that’s not always the case. If police officers have identified a suspect and want to know what kind of weapons that person might have, and they know that suspect’s Twitter handle, they could build a tool like Seitz outlined in his blog post, which would scoop up to 3,200 tweets, scan them for guns, and then save the photos in a folder for gun photos. That knowledge in hand, our hypothetical officers can now quickly skim a designated folder of photos, making sure they know what weapons the suspect could have on hand.

That’s a pretty neat trick, and because it’s open-source code, it’s hardly limited to just law enforcement. Intelligence officers trying to understand what weapons are showing up in a war could apply the same tool to Twitter accounts on the front lines in Syria or Ukraine. The amount of data in the world can be staggering, but with tools like this, they can help people avoid accidentally stumbling onto a gun in a haystack.