Japan Tsunami

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3D Printing: Food in Space

3D Printing

NASA and a Texas company are exploring the possibility of using a "3D printer" on deep space missions in a way where the "D" would stand for dining.

NASA has awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I contract to Systems and Materials Research Consultancy of Austin, Texas to study the feasibility of using additive manufacturing, better known as 3D printing, for making food in space. Systems and Materials Research Consultancy will conduct a study for the development of a 3D printed food system for long duration space missions. Phase I SBIR proposals are very early stage concepts that may or may not mature into actual systems. This food printing technology may result in a phase II study, which still will be several years from being tested on an actual space flight.

As NASA ventures farther into space, whether redirecting an asteroid or sending astronauts to Mars, the agency will need to make improvements in life support systems, including how to feed the crew during those long deep space missions. NASA's Advanced Food Technology program is interested in developing methods that will provide food to meet safety, acceptability, variety, and nutritional stability requirements for long exploration missions, while using the least amount of spacecraft resources and crew time. The current food system wouldn't meet the nutritional needs and five-year shelf life required for a mission to Mars or other long duration missions. Because refrigeration and freezing require significant spacecraft resources, current NASA provisions consist solely of individually prepackaged shelf stable foods, processed with technologies that degrade the micronutrients in the foods.

Additionally, the current space food is selected before astronauts ever leave the ground and crew members don't have the ability to personalize recipes or really prepare foods themselves. Over long duration missions, a variety of acceptable food is critical to ensure crew members continue to eat adequate amounts of food, and consequently, get the nutrients they need to maintain their health and performance. 

NASA is funding this phase I six-month $125,000 study on 3D printing of foods to determine the capability of this technology to enable nutrient stability and provide a variety of foods from shelf stable ingredients, while minimizing crew time and waste. NASA selected this proposal because the research team, subcontractors and consultants included premier food rheology and flavor expertise that would be required for a novel product development system. The work plan for this feasibility study also was well laid out and the technology offers the potential to meet some of the food requirements using basic food components for long duration missions. 

NASA recognizes in-space and additive manufacturing offers the potential for new mission opportunities, whether "printing" food, tools or entire spacecraft. Additive manufacturing offers opportunities to get the best fit, form and delivery systems of materials for deep space travel. This's why NASA is a leading partner in the president's National Network for Manufacturing Innovation and the Advanced Manufacturing Initiative. 

3D printing is just one of the many transformation technologies that NASA is investing in to create the new knowledge and capabilities needed to enable future space missions while benefiting life here on Earth. 

Source:

www.nasa.gov

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WAS FOUND HEAVEN SITES GREEK WERE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS YEARS OLD

Illustration of Neanderthal Primordial man

ATHENA - Anthropologists find sites beach "paradise" Greek who once inhabited by Neanderthal humans approximately 100,000 years ago. These findings reveal a population derived from Kalamakia Middle Paleolithic cave site in Mani peninsula, southern Greece.

Neandhertal believed to be extinct about 30 thousand years ago. Researchers also believe that Greece become Neandhertal protection areas, where early humans tend to be on the site approximately 40 thousand years ago.

So, this site dubbed "paradise" for early humans who inhabit the waterfront in Mani peninsula, southern Greece. Various kind of food sources, like a hunted animal and plants found in this location.

Katerina Harvati, chief investigator Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironments, University of Tubingen said, researchers studying the remains and identify some Neanderthal who represented children, adolescents and adult men and women.

"The site is very close to the sea. During glacial time’s lower sea level, so there will likely be open coastal plains. These would be ideal habitat for wildlife species that are hunted man," said Harvati, as quoted by Discovery, Thursday (23/5 / 2013).

Several types of deer and the Pyrenean ibex hunting target Neanderthals. Researchers also revealed that these early humans to consume turtle meat, shells and manufacture tooling through the shell.

Researchers also believe that Neandhertal inhabits caves along the coast of Mani Peninsula. "Identification of bones and teeth Neandhertal represent many individuals in the cave Kalamakia that supports the emergence of the human species in southern Greece," said Eric Delson of Lehman College of the City University, New York. (FMH)

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Alien Earths Could Form Earlier Than Expected

Earth

ScienceDaily (June 13, 2012) —Building a terrestrial planet requires raw materials that weren't available in the early history of the universe. The Big Bang filled space with hydrogen and helium. Chemical elements like silicon and oxygen -- key components of rocks -- had to be cooked up over time by stars. But how long did that take? How many of such heavy elements do you need to form planets?

Previous studies have shown that Jupiter-sized gas giants tend to form around stars containing more heavy elements than the Sun. However, new research by a team of astronomers found that planets smaller than Neptune are located around a wide variety of stars, including those with fewer heavy elements than the Sun. As a result, rocky worlds like Earth could have formed earlier than expected in the universe's history.

"This work suggests that terrestrial worlds could form at almost any time in our galaxy's history," said Smithsonian astronomer David Latham (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics). "You don't need many earlier generations of stars."

Latham played a lead role in the study, which was led by Lars A. Buchhave from the University of Copenhagen and will be published in the journal Nature. The work is being presented June 13 at the 220th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Astronomers call chemical elements heavier than hydrogen and helium "metals." They measure the metal content, or metallicities, of other stars using the Sun as a benchmark. Stars with more heavy elements are considered metal-rich while stars with fewer heavy elements are considered metal-poor.

Latham and his colleagues examined more than 150 stars known to have planets, based on data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft. They measured the stars' metallicities and correlated that with the sizes of the associated planets. Large planets tended to orbit stars with solar metallicities or higher. Smaller worlds, though, were found around metal-rich and metal-poor stars alike.

"Giant planets prefer metal-rich stars. Little ones don't," explained Latham.

They found that terrestrial planets form at a wide range of metallicities, including systems with only one-quarter of the Sun's metal content.

Their discovery supports the "core accretion" model of planet formation. In this model, primordial dust accumulates into mile-sized planetesimals that then coalesce into full-fledged planets. The largest, weighing 10 times Earth, can then gather surrounding hydrogen and become a gas giant.

A gas giant's core must form quickly since hydrogen in the protoplanetary disk dissipates rapidly, swept away by stellar winds in just a few million years. Higher metallicities might support the formation of large cores, explaining why we're more likely to find a gas giant orbiting a metal-rich star.

"This result fits with the core accretion model of planet formation in a natural way," said Latham.

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A New, Beautifully Colored Lizard Discovered in the Peruvian Andes

The new colorful lizard has been named Potamites montanicola, or "mountain dweller."

Germán Chávez and Diego Vásquez from the Centro de Ornitología y Biodiversidad (CORBIDI) in Peru have discovered a new colorful lizard which they named Potamites montanicola, or "mountain dweller." The new species was found in Cordillera de Vilcabamba and Apurimac river valley, the Cusco Region of Peru at altitude ranging from 1,600 to 2,100 meters. 

Their study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

"The new discovery raises some questions," say the authors. This is the only member of the genus known to live at such altitude. It is yet unknown what biological mechanisms help the lizard to survive in this harsh environment, much colder than what it's relatives in the genus prefer. Scientists also believe the lizard may be nocturnal, which raises the question of how it maintains its body temperature during night time. In some cases, individuals were observed swimming in streams, which is rather unusual behavior for the members this genus.

"Further studies are needed to reveal its biology, population structure and conservation status, and outline its overall distribution," Chávez concludes.

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Four-wheel nanocar takes to the road

Nano Car

A "four-wheel drive car" less than one billionth the length of an average SUV has been built and operated by researchers in the Netherlands and Switzerland. The molecular machine is about 1 nm long and uses electrons as fuel as it navigates across a copper surface. The tiny device could find use in nanometre-sized robotics or as tiny transporters that shift molecules around.

Molecular machines are common in nature. Motor proteins, for example, can move along a surface to transport molecular-sized cargo and are often used to build structures within living cells. Scientists would like to make their own versions of motor proteins, and indeed they have already designed and demonstrated single molecules that can move across surfaces. But these have been mostly passive: to ensure that they travel in a certain direction, they have had to be pulled or pushed.

Now, Ben Feringa of the University of Groningen and colleagues have demonstrated a truly active single-molecule vehicle. Constructed around an organic, carbon-based frame, it has four "wheels" or rotor parts, connected to the body via carbon–carbon double bonds. When the tip of a nearby scanning tunnelling microscope fires electrons at these bonds, they break and re-form the other way round. This process is known as isomerization and causes the wheels to turn, and the vehicle to move forward.

Steering by symmetry

Feringa and colleagues could make their molecular vehicle move in two ways, by adjusting the symmetry or "chirality" of the rotor parts. In one, the vehicle moves along a random path, something that has been performed before with active molecular machines. However, the researchers could also make the vehicle drive in a nearly straight line.

"The important step taken, in my opinion, is that we have shown that we can propel a single molecule along a surface and control directionality," said Feringa. "This is exactly what happens with protein nanomotors that 'walk' along filaments with control of directionality," he added.

'Milestone' reached

Ludwig Bartels at the University of California at Riverside, US, agrees that the ability to control direction is a major step forward. "This work is a milestone towards controlled transport of molecular species across surfaces," he says. "But much work remains – most importantly, the replacement of the energy source away from the tip of a tunnelling microscope (which could in the first place just drag any molecule along, irrespective of its nature), and the achievement of concerted motion of the substrate linkers so that the motion becomes really straight."

James Tour of Rice University in Texas, US, thinks the demonstration brings scientists closer to the goal of using synthetic molecular machines to assemble structures, rather like enzymes do inside the body. "This is an important and fundamental milestone in the quest for nanomachines that will one day do useful work," he says.

The research is described in Nature 479 208.

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