Nasa says new heavy-lift rocket debut not likely until 2018

CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida): Nasa's new heavy-lift rocket, designed to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and eventually Mars, likely will not have its debut test flight until November 2018, nearly a year later than previous estimates, agency officials said on Wednesday.

Nasa is 70 percent confident of making a November 2018 launch date, given the technical, financial and management hurdles the Space Launch System faces on the road to development, Nasa associate administrators Robert Lightfoot and Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters on a conference call.

Nasa estimates it could spend almost $12 billion developing the first of three variations of the rocket and associated ground systems through the debut flight, and potentially billions more to build and fly heavier-lift next-generation boosters, a July 2014 General Accountability Office report on the program said.

While the rocket might be ready for a test flight in December 2017, as previously planned, the new assessment showed the odds of that were "significantly less" than the 70 percent confidence level Nasa requires of new programs, Gerstenmaier said.

"We want to commit to this (November 2018) date and show that we can meet it," added Lightfoot.

The schedule assumes flat annual budgets of about $1.3 billion for the SLS rocket and another $1.5 billion for Orion crew capsule and associated ground launch systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The GAO report found that Nasa's SLS rocket program was about $400 million short of meeting its December 2017 target.

The rocket is a modified version of the shuttle-derived, heavy-lift booster developed under Nasa's previous exploration initiative known as Constellation.

The US space agency spent about $9 billion on Constellation, which included the Orion capsule, from 2005 to 2010, before President Obama axed the program. Its goal was to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2020.

Instead, the White House and Congress approved a flexible path toward Mars, including a visit to an asteroid that will be robotically relocated into a high lunar orbit.

Nasa did not say if the 11-month slip in the new rocket's debut flight, which will be an unmanned test run around the moon, would impact the second mission, slated for 2021, with a two-member crew.

Initially, the SLS rocket, which uses leftover space shuttle main engines and shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters, will be able to put about 77 tons (70 metric tons) into an orbit about 100 miles (160 km) above Earth. Later versions are expected to carry nearly twice that load. Ultimately, the rocket is expected to be used to launch astronauts and equipment to Mars.

"Our nation has embarked on a very ambitious space exploration program and we owe it to the American taxpayers to get this right," Lightfoot said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sleep switch discovered deep inside the brain

In a major breakthrough, scientists have found a sleep switch buried deep in the most primitive part of the brain. Neurons or brain cells located in this tiny region release a messenger chemical called GABA that sets of a series of steps leading to deep sleep. The discovery may lead to therapies for curing sleeplessness, a growing disorder across the world.

The discovery was made by researchers at Harvard School of Medicine and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and published online in the August issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The sleep switch is located in the parafacial zone (PZ) in the brainstem. The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain that regulates basic functions necessary for survival, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. The study demonstrates that fully half of all of the brain's sleep-promoting activity originates from this zone. The activity of this "sleep node" appears to be both necessary and sufficient to produce deep sleep.

"The close association of a sleep center with other regions that are critical for life highlights the evolutionary importance of sleep in the brain," says Caroline E. Bass, assistant professor at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a co-author on the paper.

The researchers found that a specific type of neuron in the PZ that makes the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is responsible for deep sleep. They used a set of innovative tools to precisely control these neurons remotely, in essence giving them the ability to turn the neurons on and off at will.

"These new molecular approaches allow unprecedented control over brain function at the cellular level," says Christelle Ancelet, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard School of Medicine. "Before these tools were developed, we often used 'electrical stimulation' to activate a region, but the problem is that doing so stimulates everything the electrode touches and even surrounding areas it didn't. It was a sledgehammer approach, when what we needed was a scalpel."

"To get the precision required for these experiments, we introduced a virus into the PZ that expressed a 'designer' receptor on GABA neurons only but didn't otherwise alter brain function," explains Patrick Fuller, assistant professor at Harvard and senior author on the paper. "When we turned on the GABA neurons in the PZ, the animals quickly fell into a deep sleep without the use of sedatives or sleep aids."

How these neurons interact in the brain with other sleep and wake-promoting brain regions still need to be studied, the researchers say, but eventually these findings may translate into new medications for treating sleep disorders, including insomnia, and the development of better and safer anesthetics.

"We are at a truly transformative point in neuroscience," says Bass, "where the use of designer genes gives us unprecedented ability to control the brain. We can now answer fundamental questions of brain function, which have traditionally been beyond our reach, including the 'why' of sleep, one of the more enduring mysteries in the neurosciences."

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sleep switch discovered deep inside the brain

In a major breakthrough, scientists have found a sleep switch buried deep in the most primitive part of the brain. Neurons or brain cells located in this tiny region release a messenger chemical called GABA that sets of a series of steps leading to deep sleep. The discovery may lead to therapies for curing sleeplessness, a growing disorder across the world.

The discovery was made by researchers at Harvard School of Medicine and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and published online in the August issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The sleep switch is located in the parafacial zone (PZ) in the brainstem. The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain that regulates basic functions necessary for survival, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. The study demonstrates that fully half of all of the brain's sleep-promoting activity originates from this zone. The activity of this "sleep node" appears to be both necessary and sufficient to produce deep sleep.

"The close association of a sleep center with other regions that are critical for life highlights the evolutionary importance of sleep in the brain," says Caroline E. Bass, assistant professor at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a co-author on the paper.

The researchers found that a specific type of neuron in the PZ that makes the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is responsible for deep sleep. They used a set of innovative tools to precisely control these neurons remotely, in essence giving them the ability to turn the neurons on and off at will.

"These new molecular approaches allow unprecedented control over brain function at the cellular level," says Christelle Ancelet, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard School of Medicine. "Before these tools were developed, we often used 'electrical stimulation' to activate a region, but the problem is that doing so stimulates everything the electrode touches and even surrounding areas it didn't. It was a sledgehammer approach, when what we needed was a scalpel."

"To get the precision required for these experiments, we introduced a virus into the PZ that expressed a 'designer' receptor on GABA neurons only but didn't otherwise alter brain function," explains Patrick Fuller, assistant professor at Harvard and senior author on the paper. "When we turned on the GABA neurons in the PZ, the animals quickly fell into a deep sleep without the use of sedatives or sleep aids."

How these neurons interact in the brain with other sleep and wake-promoting brain regions still need to be studied, the researchers say, but eventually these findings may translate into new medications for treating sleep disorders, including insomnia, and the development of better and safer anesthetics.

"We are at a truly transformative point in neuroscience," says Bass, "where the use of designer genes gives us unprecedented ability to control the brain. We can now answer fundamental questions of brain function, which have traditionally been beyond our reach, including the 'why' of sleep, one of the more enduring mysteries in the neurosciences."

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Nasa says new heavy-lift rocket debut not likely until 2018

CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida): Nasa's new heavy-lift rocket, designed to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and eventually Mars, likely will not have its debut test flight until November 2018, nearly a year later than previous estimates, agency officials said on Wednesday.

Nasa is 70 percent confident of making a November 2018 launch date, given the technical, financial and management hurdles the Space Launch System faces on the road to development, Nasa associate administrators Robert Lightfoot and Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters on a conference call.

Nasa estimates it could spend almost $12 billion developing the first of three variations of the rocket and associated ground systems through the debut flight, and potentially billions more to build and fly heavier-lift next-generation boosters, a July 2014 General Accountability Office report on the program said.

While the rocket might be ready for a test flight in December 2017, as previously planned, the new assessment showed the odds of that were "significantly less" than the 70 percent confidence level Nasa requires of new programs, Gerstenmaier said.

"We want to commit to this (November 2018) date and show that we can meet it," added Lightfoot.

The schedule assumes flat annual budgets of about $1.3 billion for the SLS rocket and another $1.5 billion for Orion crew capsule and associated ground launch systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The GAO report found that Nasa's SLS rocket program was about $400 million short of meeting its December 2017 target.

The rocket is a modified version of the shuttle-derived, heavy-lift booster developed under Nasa's previous exploration initiative known as Constellation.

The US space agency spent about $9 billion on Constellation, which included the Orion capsule, from 2005 to 2010, before President Obama axed the program. Its goal was to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2020.

Instead, the White House and Congress approved a flexible path toward Mars, including a visit to an asteroid that will be robotically relocated into a high lunar orbit.

Nasa did not say if the 11-month slip in the new rocket's debut flight, which will be an unmanned test run around the moon, would impact the second mission, slated for 2021, with a two-member crew.

Initially, the SLS rocket, which uses leftover space shuttle main engines and shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters, will be able to put about 77 tons (70 metric tons) into an orbit about 100 miles (160 km) above Earth. Later versions are expected to carry nearly twice that load. Ultimately, the rocket is expected to be used to launch astronauts and equipment to Mars.

"Our nation has embarked on a very ambitious space exploration program and we owe it to the American taxpayers to get this right," Lightfoot said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Nasa says new heavy-lift rocket debut not likely until 2018

CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida): Nasa's new heavy-lift rocket, designed to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and eventually Mars, likely will not have its debut test flight until November 2018, nearly a year later than previous estimates, agency officials said on Wednesday.

Nasa is 70 percent confident of making a November 2018 launch date, given the technical, financial and management hurdles the Space Launch System faces on the road to development, Nasa associate administrators Robert Lightfoot and Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters on a conference call.

Nasa estimates it could spend almost $12 billion developing the first of three variations of the rocket and associated ground systems through the debut flight, and potentially billions more to build and fly heavier-lift next-generation boosters, a July 2014 General Accountability Office report on the program said.

While the rocket might be ready for a test flight in December 2017, as previously planned, the new assessment showed the odds of that were "significantly less" than the 70 percent confidence level Nasa requires of new programs, Gerstenmaier said.

"We want to commit to this (November 2018) date and show that we can meet it," added Lightfoot.

The schedule assumes flat annual budgets of about $1.3 billion for the SLS rocket and another $1.5 billion for Orion crew capsule and associated ground launch systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The GAO report found that Nasa's SLS rocket program was about $400 million short of meeting its December 2017 target.

The rocket is a modified version of the shuttle-derived, heavy-lift booster developed under Nasa's previous exploration initiative known as Constellation.

The US space agency spent about $9 billion on Constellation, which included the Orion capsule, from 2005 to 2010, before President Obama axed the program. Its goal was to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2020.

Instead, the White House and Congress approved a flexible path toward Mars, including a visit to an asteroid that will be robotically relocated into a high lunar orbit.

Nasa did not say if the 11-month slip in the new rocket's debut flight, which will be an unmanned test run around the moon, would impact the second mission, slated for 2021, with a two-member crew.

Initially, the SLS rocket, which uses leftover space shuttle main engines and shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters, will be able to put about 77 tons (70 metric tons) into an orbit about 100 miles (160 km) above Earth. Later versions are expected to carry nearly twice that load. Ultimately, the rocket is expected to be used to launch astronauts and equipment to Mars.

"Our nation has embarked on a very ambitious space exploration program and we owe it to the American taxpayers to get this right," Lightfoot said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sleep switch discovered deep inside the brain

In a major breakthrough, scientists have found a sleep switch buried deep in the most primitive part of the brain. Neurons or brain cells located in this tiny region release a messenger chemical called GABA that sets of a series of steps leading to deep sleep. The discovery may lead to therapies for curing sleeplessness, a growing disorder across the world.

The discovery was made by researchers at Harvard School of Medicine and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and published online in the August issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The sleep switch is located in the parafacial zone (PZ) in the brainstem. The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain that regulates basic functions necessary for survival, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. The study demonstrates that fully half of all of the brain's sleep-promoting activity originates from this zone. The activity of this "sleep node" appears to be both necessary and sufficient to produce deep sleep.

"The close association of a sleep center with other regions that are critical for life highlights the evolutionary importance of sleep in the brain," says Caroline E. Bass, assistant professor at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a co-author on the paper.

The researchers found that a specific type of neuron in the PZ that makes the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is responsible for deep sleep. They used a set of innovative tools to precisely control these neurons remotely, in essence giving them the ability to turn the neurons on and off at will.

"These new molecular approaches allow unprecedented control over brain function at the cellular level," says Christelle Ancelet, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard School of Medicine. "Before these tools were developed, we often used 'electrical stimulation' to activate a region, but the problem is that doing so stimulates everything the electrode touches and even surrounding areas it didn't. It was a sledgehammer approach, when what we needed was a scalpel."

"To get the precision required for these experiments, we introduced a virus into the PZ that expressed a 'designer' receptor on GABA neurons only but didn't otherwise alter brain function," explains Patrick Fuller, assistant professor at Harvard and senior author on the paper. "When we turned on the GABA neurons in the PZ, the animals quickly fell into a deep sleep without the use of sedatives or sleep aids."

How these neurons interact in the brain with other sleep and wake-promoting brain regions still need to be studied, the researchers say, but eventually these findings may translate into new medications for treating sleep disorders, including insomnia, and the development of better and safer anesthetics.

"We are at a truly transformative point in neuroscience," says Bass, "where the use of designer genes gives us unprecedented ability to control the brain. We can now answer fundamental questions of brain function, which have traditionally been beyond our reach, including the 'why' of sleep, one of the more enduring mysteries in the neurosciences."

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Nasa says new heavy-lift rocket debut not likely until 2018

CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida): Nasa's new heavy-lift rocket, designed to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and eventually Mars, likely will not have its debut test flight until November 2018, nearly a year later than previous estimates, agency officials said on Wednesday.

Nasa is 70 percent confident of making a November 2018 launch date, given the technical, financial and management hurdles the Space Launch System faces on the road to development, Nasa associate administrators Robert Lightfoot and Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters on a conference call.

Nasa estimates it could spend almost $12 billion developing the first of three variations of the rocket and associated ground systems through the debut flight, and potentially billions more to build and fly heavier-lift next-generation boosters, a July 2014 General Accountability Office report on the program said.

While the rocket might be ready for a test flight in December 2017, as previously planned, the new assessment showed the odds of that were "significantly less" than the 70 percent confidence level Nasa requires of new programs, Gerstenmaier said.

"We want to commit to this (November 2018) date and show that we can meet it," added Lightfoot.

The schedule assumes flat annual budgets of about $1.3 billion for the SLS rocket and another $1.5 billion for Orion crew capsule and associated ground launch systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The GAO report found that Nasa's SLS rocket program was about $400 million short of meeting its December 2017 target.

The rocket is a modified version of the shuttle-derived, heavy-lift booster developed under Nasa's previous exploration initiative known as Constellation.

The US space agency spent about $9 billion on Constellation, which included the Orion capsule, from 2005 to 2010, before President Obama axed the program. Its goal was to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2020.

Instead, the White House and Congress approved a flexible path toward Mars, including a visit to an asteroid that will be robotically relocated into a high lunar orbit.

Nasa did not say if the 11-month slip in the new rocket's debut flight, which will be an unmanned test run around the moon, would impact the second mission, slated for 2021, with a two-member crew.

Initially, the SLS rocket, which uses leftover space shuttle main engines and shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters, will be able to put about 77 tons (70 metric tons) into an orbit about 100 miles (160 km) above Earth. Later versions are expected to carry nearly twice that load. Ultimately, the rocket is expected to be used to launch astronauts and equipment to Mars.

"Our nation has embarked on a very ambitious space exploration program and we owe it to the American taxpayers to get this right," Lightfoot said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sleep switch discovered deep inside the brain

In a major breakthrough, scientists have found a sleep switch buried deep in the most primitive part of the brain. Neurons or brain cells located in this tiny region release a messenger chemical called GABA that sets of a series of steps leading to deep sleep. The discovery may lead to therapies for curing sleeplessness, a growing disorder across the world.

The discovery was made by researchers at Harvard School of Medicine and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and published online in the August issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The sleep switch is located in the parafacial zone (PZ) in the brainstem. The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain that regulates basic functions necessary for survival, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. The study demonstrates that fully half of all of the brain's sleep-promoting activity originates from this zone. The activity of this "sleep node" appears to be both necessary and sufficient to produce deep sleep.

"The close association of a sleep center with other regions that are critical for life highlights the evolutionary importance of sleep in the brain," says Caroline E. Bass, assistant professor at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a co-author on the paper.

The researchers found that a specific type of neuron in the PZ that makes the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is responsible for deep sleep. They used a set of innovative tools to precisely control these neurons remotely, in essence giving them the ability to turn the neurons on and off at will.

"These new molecular approaches allow unprecedented control over brain function at the cellular level," says Christelle Ancelet, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard School of Medicine. "Before these tools were developed, we often used 'electrical stimulation' to activate a region, but the problem is that doing so stimulates everything the electrode touches and even surrounding areas it didn't. It was a sledgehammer approach, when what we needed was a scalpel."

"To get the precision required for these experiments, we introduced a virus into the PZ that expressed a 'designer' receptor on GABA neurons only but didn't otherwise alter brain function," explains Patrick Fuller, assistant professor at Harvard and senior author on the paper. "When we turned on the GABA neurons in the PZ, the animals quickly fell into a deep sleep without the use of sedatives or sleep aids."

How these neurons interact in the brain with other sleep and wake-promoting brain regions still need to be studied, the researchers say, but eventually these findings may translate into new medications for treating sleep disorders, including insomnia, and the development of better and safer anesthetics.

"We are at a truly transformative point in neuroscience," says Bass, "where the use of designer genes gives us unprecedented ability to control the brain. We can now answer fundamental questions of brain function, which have traditionally been beyond our reach, including the 'why' of sleep, one of the more enduring mysteries in the neurosciences."

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sleep switch discovered deep inside the brain

In a major breakthrough, scientists have found a sleep switch buried deep in the most primitive part of the brain. Neurons or brain cells located in this tiny region release a messenger chemical called GABA that sets of a series of steps leading to deep sleep. The discovery may lead to therapies for curing sleeplessness, a growing disorder across the world.

The discovery was made by researchers at Harvard School of Medicine and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and published online in the August issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The sleep switch is located in the parafacial zone (PZ) in the brainstem. The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain that regulates basic functions necessary for survival, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. The study demonstrates that fully half of all of the brain's sleep-promoting activity originates from this zone. The activity of this "sleep node" appears to be both necessary and sufficient to produce deep sleep.

"The close association of a sleep center with other regions that are critical for life highlights the evolutionary importance of sleep in the brain," says Caroline E. Bass, assistant professor at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a co-author on the paper.

The researchers found that a specific type of neuron in the PZ that makes the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is responsible for deep sleep. They used a set of innovative tools to precisely control these neurons remotely, in essence giving them the ability to turn the neurons on and off at will.

"These new molecular approaches allow unprecedented control over brain function at the cellular level," says Christelle Ancelet, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard School of Medicine. "Before these tools were developed, we often used 'electrical stimulation' to activate a region, but the problem is that doing so stimulates everything the electrode touches and even surrounding areas it didn't. It was a sledgehammer approach, when what we needed was a scalpel."

"To get the precision required for these experiments, we introduced a virus into the PZ that expressed a 'designer' receptor on GABA neurons only but didn't otherwise alter brain function," explains Patrick Fuller, assistant professor at Harvard and senior author on the paper. "When we turned on the GABA neurons in the PZ, the animals quickly fell into a deep sleep without the use of sedatives or sleep aids."

How these neurons interact in the brain with other sleep and wake-promoting brain regions still need to be studied, the researchers say, but eventually these findings may translate into new medications for treating sleep disorders, including insomnia, and the development of better and safer anesthetics.

"We are at a truly transformative point in neuroscience," says Bass, "where the use of designer genes gives us unprecedented ability to control the brain. We can now answer fundamental questions of brain function, which have traditionally been beyond our reach, including the 'why' of sleep, one of the more enduring mysteries in the neurosciences."

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Nasa says new heavy-lift rocket debut not likely until 2018

CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida): Nasa's new heavy-lift rocket, designed to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and eventually Mars, likely will not have its debut test flight until November 2018, nearly a year later than previous estimates, agency officials said on Wednesday.

Nasa is 70 percent confident of making a November 2018 launch date, given the technical, financial and management hurdles the Space Launch System faces on the road to development, Nasa associate administrators Robert Lightfoot and Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters on a conference call.

Nasa estimates it could spend almost $12 billion developing the first of three variations of the rocket and associated ground systems through the debut flight, and potentially billions more to build and fly heavier-lift next-generation boosters, a July 2014 General Accountability Office report on the program said.

While the rocket might be ready for a test flight in December 2017, as previously planned, the new assessment showed the odds of that were "significantly less" than the 70 percent confidence level Nasa requires of new programs, Gerstenmaier said.

"We want to commit to this (November 2018) date and show that we can meet it," added Lightfoot.

The schedule assumes flat annual budgets of about $1.3 billion for the SLS rocket and another $1.5 billion for Orion crew capsule and associated ground launch systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The GAO report found that Nasa's SLS rocket program was about $400 million short of meeting its December 2017 target.

The rocket is a modified version of the shuttle-derived, heavy-lift booster developed under Nasa's previous exploration initiative known as Constellation.

The US space agency spent about $9 billion on Constellation, which included the Orion capsule, from 2005 to 2010, before President Obama axed the program. Its goal was to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2020.

Instead, the White House and Congress approved a flexible path toward Mars, including a visit to an asteroid that will be robotically relocated into a high lunar orbit.

Nasa did not say if the 11-month slip in the new rocket's debut flight, which will be an unmanned test run around the moon, would impact the second mission, slated for 2021, with a two-member crew.

Initially, the SLS rocket, which uses leftover space shuttle main engines and shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters, will be able to put about 77 tons (70 metric tons) into an orbit about 100 miles (160 km) above Earth. Later versions are expected to carry nearly twice that load. Ultimately, the rocket is expected to be used to launch astronauts and equipment to Mars.

"Our nation has embarked on a very ambitious space exploration program and we owe it to the American taxpayers to get this right," Lightfoot said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sleep switch discovered deep inside the brain

In a major breakthrough, scientists have found a sleep switch buried deep in the most primitive part of the brain. Neurons or brain cells located in this tiny region release a messenger chemical called GABA that sets of a series of steps leading to deep sleep. The discovery may lead to therapies for curing sleeplessness, a growing disorder across the world.

The discovery was made by researchers at Harvard School of Medicine and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and published online in the August issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The sleep switch is located in the parafacial zone (PZ) in the brainstem. The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain that regulates basic functions necessary for survival, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. The study demonstrates that fully half of all of the brain's sleep-promoting activity originates from this zone. The activity of this "sleep node" appears to be both necessary and sufficient to produce deep sleep.

"The close association of a sleep center with other regions that are critical for life highlights the evolutionary importance of sleep in the brain," says Caroline E. Bass, assistant professor at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a co-author on the paper.

The researchers found that a specific type of neuron in the PZ that makes the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is responsible for deep sleep. They used a set of innovative tools to precisely control these neurons remotely, in essence giving them the ability to turn the neurons on and off at will.

"These new molecular approaches allow unprecedented control over brain function at the cellular level," says Christelle Ancelet, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard School of Medicine. "Before these tools were developed, we often used 'electrical stimulation' to activate a region, but the problem is that doing so stimulates everything the electrode touches and even surrounding areas it didn't. It was a sledgehammer approach, when what we needed was a scalpel."

"To get the precision required for these experiments, we introduced a virus into the PZ that expressed a 'designer' receptor on GABA neurons only but didn't otherwise alter brain function," explains Patrick Fuller, assistant professor at Harvard and senior author on the paper. "When we turned on the GABA neurons in the PZ, the animals quickly fell into a deep sleep without the use of sedatives or sleep aids."

How these neurons interact in the brain with other sleep and wake-promoting brain regions still need to be studied, the researchers say, but eventually these findings may translate into new medications for treating sleep disorders, including insomnia, and the development of better and safer anesthetics.

"We are at a truly transformative point in neuroscience," says Bass, "where the use of designer genes gives us unprecedented ability to control the brain. We can now answer fundamental questions of brain function, which have traditionally been beyond our reach, including the 'why' of sleep, one of the more enduring mysteries in the neurosciences."

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

Nasa says new heavy-lift rocket debut not likely until 2018

CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida): Nasa's new heavy-lift rocket, designed to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and eventually Mars, likely will not have its debut test flight until November 2018, nearly a year later than previous estimates, agency officials said on Wednesday.

Nasa is 70 percent confident of making a November 2018 launch date, given the technical, financial and management hurdles the Space Launch System faces on the road to development, Nasa associate administrators Robert Lightfoot and Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters on a conference call.

Nasa estimates it could spend almost $12 billion developing the first of three variations of the rocket and associated ground systems through the debut flight, and potentially billions more to build and fly heavier-lift next-generation boosters, a July 2014 General Accountability Office report on the program said.

While the rocket might be ready for a test flight in December 2017, as previously planned, the new assessment showed the odds of that were "significantly less" than the 70 percent confidence level Nasa requires of new programs, Gerstenmaier said.

"We want to commit to this (November 2018) date and show that we can meet it," added Lightfoot.

The schedule assumes flat annual budgets of about $1.3 billion for the SLS rocket and another $1.5 billion for Orion crew capsule and associated ground launch systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The GAO report found that Nasa's SLS rocket program was about $400 million short of meeting its December 2017 target.

The rocket is a modified version of the shuttle-derived, heavy-lift booster developed under Nasa's previous exploration initiative known as Constellation.

The US space agency spent about $9 billion on Constellation, which included the Orion capsule, from 2005 to 2010, before President Obama axed the program. Its goal was to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2020.

Instead, the White House and Congress approved a flexible path toward Mars, including a visit to an asteroid that will be robotically relocated into a high lunar orbit.

Nasa did not say if the 11-month slip in the new rocket's debut flight, which will be an unmanned test run around the moon, would impact the second mission, slated for 2021, with a two-member crew.

Initially, the SLS rocket, which uses leftover space shuttle main engines and shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters, will be able to put about 77 tons (70 metric tons) into an orbit about 100 miles (160 km) above Earth. Later versions are expected to carry nearly twice that load. Ultimately, the rocket is expected to be used to launch astronauts and equipment to Mars.

"Our nation has embarked on a very ambitious space exploration program and we owe it to the American taxpayers to get this right," Lightfoot said.

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sleep switch discovered deep inside the brain

In a major breakthrough, scientists have found a sleep switch buried deep in the most primitive part of the brain. Neurons or brain cells located in this tiny region release a messenger chemical called GABA that sets of a series of steps leading to deep sleep. The discovery may lead to therapies for curing sleeplessness, a growing disorder across the world.

The discovery was made by researchers at Harvard School of Medicine and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and published online in the August issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The sleep switch is located in the parafacial zone (PZ) in the brainstem. The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain that regulates basic functions necessary for survival, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. The study demonstrates that fully half of all of the brain's sleep-promoting activity originates from this zone. The activity of this "sleep node" appears to be both necessary and sufficient to produce deep sleep.

"The close association of a sleep center with other regions that are critical for life highlights the evolutionary importance of sleep in the brain," says Caroline E. Bass, assistant professor at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a co-author on the paper.

The researchers found that a specific type of neuron in the PZ that makes the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is responsible for deep sleep. They used a set of innovative tools to precisely control these neurons remotely, in essence giving them the ability to turn the neurons on and off at will.

"These new molecular approaches allow unprecedented control over brain function at the cellular level," says Christelle Ancelet, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard School of Medicine. "Before these tools were developed, we often used 'electrical stimulation' to activate a region, but the problem is that doing so stimulates everything the electrode touches and even surrounding areas it didn't. It was a sledgehammer approach, when what we needed was a scalpel."

"To get the precision required for these experiments, we introduced a virus into the PZ that expressed a 'designer' receptor on GABA neurons only but didn't otherwise alter brain function," explains Patrick Fuller, assistant professor at Harvard and senior author on the paper. "When we turned on the GABA neurons in the PZ, the animals quickly fell into a deep sleep without the use of sedatives or sleep aids."

How these neurons interact in the brain with other sleep and wake-promoting brain regions still need to be studied, the researchers say, but eventually these findings may translate into new medications for treating sleep disorders, including insomnia, and the development of better and safer anesthetics.

"We are at a truly transformative point in neuroscience," says Bass, "where the use of designer genes gives us unprecedented ability to control the brain. We can now answer fundamental questions of brain function, which have traditionally been beyond our reach, including the 'why' of sleep, one of the more enduring mysteries in the neurosciences."

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Nasa says new heavy-lift rocket debut not likely until 2018

CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida): Nasa's new heavy-lift rocket, designed to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and eventually Mars, likely will not have its debut test flight until November 2018, nearly a year later than previous estimates, agency officials said on Wednesday.

Nasa is 70 percent confident of making a November 2018 launch date, given the technical, financial and management hurdles the Space Launch System faces on the road to development, Nasa associate administrators Robert Lightfoot and Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters on a conference call.

Nasa estimates it could spend almost $12 billion developing the first of three variations of the rocket and associated ground systems through the debut flight, and potentially billions more to build and fly heavier-lift next-generation boosters, a July 2014 General Accountability Office report on the program said.

While the rocket might be ready for a test flight in December 2017, as previously planned, the new assessment showed the odds of that were "significantly less" than the 70 percent confidence level Nasa requires of new programs, Gerstenmaier said.

"We want to commit to this (November 2018) date and show that we can meet it," added Lightfoot.

The schedule assumes flat annual budgets of about $1.3 billion for the SLS rocket and another $1.5 billion for Orion crew capsule and associated ground launch systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The GAO report found that Nasa's SLS rocket program was about $400 million short of meeting its December 2017 target.

The rocket is a modified version of the shuttle-derived, heavy-lift booster developed under Nasa's previous exploration initiative known as Constellation.

The US space agency spent about $9 billion on Constellation, which included the Orion capsule, from 2005 to 2010, before President Obama axed the program. Its goal was to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2020.

Instead, the White House and Congress approved a flexible path toward Mars, including a visit to an asteroid that will be robotically relocated into a high lunar orbit.

Nasa did not say if the 11-month slip in the new rocket's debut flight, which will be an unmanned test run around the moon, would impact the second mission, slated for 2021, with a two-member crew.

Initially, the SLS rocket, which uses leftover space shuttle main engines and shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters, will be able to put about 77 tons (70 metric tons) into an orbit about 100 miles (160 km) above Earth. Later versions are expected to carry nearly twice that load. Ultimately, the rocket is expected to be used to launch astronauts and equipment to Mars.

"Our nation has embarked on a very ambitious space exploration program and we owe it to the American taxpayers to get this right," Lightfoot said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Nasa says new heavy-lift rocket debut not likely until 2018

CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida): Nasa's new heavy-lift rocket, designed to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and eventually Mars, likely will not have its debut test flight until November 2018, nearly a year later than previous estimates, agency officials said on Wednesday.

Nasa is 70 percent confident of making a November 2018 launch date, given the technical, financial and management hurdles the Space Launch System faces on the road to development, Nasa associate administrators Robert Lightfoot and Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters on a conference call.

Nasa estimates it could spend almost $12 billion developing the first of three variations of the rocket and associated ground systems through the debut flight, and potentially billions more to build and fly heavier-lift next-generation boosters, a July 2014 General Accountability Office report on the program said.

While the rocket might be ready for a test flight in December 2017, as previously planned, the new assessment showed the odds of that were "significantly less" than the 70 percent confidence level Nasa requires of new programs, Gerstenmaier said.

"We want to commit to this (November 2018) date and show that we can meet it," added Lightfoot.

The schedule assumes flat annual budgets of about $1.3 billion for the SLS rocket and another $1.5 billion for Orion crew capsule and associated ground launch systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The GAO report found that Nasa's SLS rocket program was about $400 million short of meeting its December 2017 target.

The rocket is a modified version of the shuttle-derived, heavy-lift booster developed under Nasa's previous exploration initiative known as Constellation.

The US space agency spent about $9 billion on Constellation, which included the Orion capsule, from 2005 to 2010, before President Obama axed the program. Its goal was to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2020.

Instead, the White House and Congress approved a flexible path toward Mars, including a visit to an asteroid that will be robotically relocated into a high lunar orbit.

Nasa did not say if the 11-month slip in the new rocket's debut flight, which will be an unmanned test run around the moon, would impact the second mission, slated for 2021, with a two-member crew.

Initially, the SLS rocket, which uses leftover space shuttle main engines and shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters, will be able to put about 77 tons (70 metric tons) into an orbit about 100 miles (160 km) above Earth. Later versions are expected to carry nearly twice that load. Ultimately, the rocket is expected to be used to launch astronauts and equipment to Mars.

"Our nation has embarked on a very ambitious space exploration program and we owe it to the American taxpayers to get this right," Lightfoot said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sleep switch discovered deep inside the brain

In a major breakthrough, scientists have found a sleep switch buried deep in the most primitive part of the brain. Neurons or brain cells located in this tiny region release a messenger chemical called GABA that sets of a series of steps leading to deep sleep. The discovery may lead to therapies for curing sleeplessness, a growing disorder across the world.

The discovery was made by researchers at Harvard School of Medicine and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and published online in the August issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The sleep switch is located in the parafacial zone (PZ) in the brainstem. The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain that regulates basic functions necessary for survival, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. The study demonstrates that fully half of all of the brain's sleep-promoting activity originates from this zone. The activity of this "sleep node" appears to be both necessary and sufficient to produce deep sleep.

"The close association of a sleep center with other regions that are critical for life highlights the evolutionary importance of sleep in the brain," says Caroline E. Bass, assistant professor at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a co-author on the paper.

The researchers found that a specific type of neuron in the PZ that makes the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is responsible for deep sleep. They used a set of innovative tools to precisely control these neurons remotely, in essence giving them the ability to turn the neurons on and off at will.

"These new molecular approaches allow unprecedented control over brain function at the cellular level," says Christelle Ancelet, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard School of Medicine. "Before these tools were developed, we often used 'electrical stimulation' to activate a region, but the problem is that doing so stimulates everything the electrode touches and even surrounding areas it didn't. It was a sledgehammer approach, when what we needed was a scalpel."

"To get the precision required for these experiments, we introduced a virus into the PZ that expressed a 'designer' receptor on GABA neurons only but didn't otherwise alter brain function," explains Patrick Fuller, assistant professor at Harvard and senior author on the paper. "When we turned on the GABA neurons in the PZ, the animals quickly fell into a deep sleep without the use of sedatives or sleep aids."

How these neurons interact in the brain with other sleep and wake-promoting brain regions still need to be studied, the researchers say, but eventually these findings may translate into new medications for treating sleep disorders, including insomnia, and the development of better and safer anesthetics.

"We are at a truly transformative point in neuroscience," says Bass, "where the use of designer genes gives us unprecedented ability to control the brain. We can now answer fundamental questions of brain function, which have traditionally been beyond our reach, including the 'why' of sleep, one of the more enduring mysteries in the neurosciences."

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sleep switch discovered deep inside the brain

In a major breakthrough, scientists have found a sleep switch buried deep in the most primitive part of the brain. Neurons or brain cells located in this tiny region release a messenger chemical called GABA that sets of a series of steps leading to deep sleep. The discovery may lead to therapies for curing sleeplessness, a growing disorder across the world.

The discovery was made by researchers at Harvard School of Medicine and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and published online in the August issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The sleep switch is located in the parafacial zone (PZ) in the brainstem. The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain that regulates basic functions necessary for survival, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. The study demonstrates that fully half of all of the brain's sleep-promoting activity originates from this zone. The activity of this "sleep node" appears to be both necessary and sufficient to produce deep sleep.

"The close association of a sleep center with other regions that are critical for life highlights the evolutionary importance of sleep in the brain," says Caroline E. Bass, assistant professor at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a co-author on the paper.

The researchers found that a specific type of neuron in the PZ that makes the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is responsible for deep sleep. They used a set of innovative tools to precisely control these neurons remotely, in essence giving them the ability to turn the neurons on and off at will.

"These new molecular approaches allow unprecedented control over brain function at the cellular level," says Christelle Ancelet, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard School of Medicine. "Before these tools were developed, we often used 'electrical stimulation' to activate a region, but the problem is that doing so stimulates everything the electrode touches and even surrounding areas it didn't. It was a sledgehammer approach, when what we needed was a scalpel."

"To get the precision required for these experiments, we introduced a virus into the PZ that expressed a 'designer' receptor on GABA neurons only but didn't otherwise alter brain function," explains Patrick Fuller, assistant professor at Harvard and senior author on the paper. "When we turned on the GABA neurons in the PZ, the animals quickly fell into a deep sleep without the use of sedatives or sleep aids."

How these neurons interact in the brain with other sleep and wake-promoting brain regions still need to be studied, the researchers say, but eventually these findings may translate into new medications for treating sleep disorders, including insomnia, and the development of better and safer anesthetics.

"We are at a truly transformative point in neuroscience," says Bass, "where the use of designer genes gives us unprecedented ability to control the brain. We can now answer fundamental questions of brain function, which have traditionally been beyond our reach, including the 'why' of sleep, one of the more enduring mysteries in the neurosciences."

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Nasa says new heavy-lift rocket debut not likely until 2018

CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida): Nasa's new heavy-lift rocket, designed to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and eventually Mars, likely will not have its debut test flight until November 2018, nearly a year later than previous estimates, agency officials said on Wednesday.

Nasa is 70 percent confident of making a November 2018 launch date, given the technical, financial and management hurdles the Space Launch System faces on the road to development, Nasa associate administrators Robert Lightfoot and Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters on a conference call.

Nasa estimates it could spend almost $12 billion developing the first of three variations of the rocket and associated ground systems through the debut flight, and potentially billions more to build and fly heavier-lift next-generation boosters, a July 2014 General Accountability Office report on the program said.

While the rocket might be ready for a test flight in December 2017, as previously planned, the new assessment showed the odds of that were "significantly less" than the 70 percent confidence level Nasa requires of new programs, Gerstenmaier said.

"We want to commit to this (November 2018) date and show that we can meet it," added Lightfoot.

The schedule assumes flat annual budgets of about $1.3 billion for the SLS rocket and another $1.5 billion for Orion crew capsule and associated ground launch systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The GAO report found that Nasa's SLS rocket program was about $400 million short of meeting its December 2017 target.

The rocket is a modified version of the shuttle-derived, heavy-lift booster developed under Nasa's previous exploration initiative known as Constellation.

The US space agency spent about $9 billion on Constellation, which included the Orion capsule, from 2005 to 2010, before President Obama axed the program. Its goal was to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2020.

Instead, the White House and Congress approved a flexible path toward Mars, including a visit to an asteroid that will be robotically relocated into a high lunar orbit.

Nasa did not say if the 11-month slip in the new rocket's debut flight, which will be an unmanned test run around the moon, would impact the second mission, slated for 2021, with a two-member crew.

Initially, the SLS rocket, which uses leftover space shuttle main engines and shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters, will be able to put about 77 tons (70 metric tons) into an orbit about 100 miles (160 km) above Earth. Later versions are expected to carry nearly twice that load. Ultimately, the rocket is expected to be used to launch astronauts and equipment to Mars.

"Our nation has embarked on a very ambitious space exploration program and we owe it to the American taxpayers to get this right," Lightfoot said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sleep switch discovered deep inside the brain

In a major breakthrough, scientists have found a sleep switch buried deep in the most primitive part of the brain. Neurons or brain cells located in this tiny region release a messenger chemical called GABA that sets of a series of steps leading to deep sleep. The discovery may lead to therapies for curing sleeplessness, a growing disorder across the world.

The discovery was made by researchers at Harvard School of Medicine and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and published online in the August issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The sleep switch is located in the parafacial zone (PZ) in the brainstem. The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain that regulates basic functions necessary for survival, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. The study demonstrates that fully half of all of the brain's sleep-promoting activity originates from this zone. The activity of this "sleep node" appears to be both necessary and sufficient to produce deep sleep.

"The close association of a sleep center with other regions that are critical for life highlights the evolutionary importance of sleep in the brain," says Caroline E. Bass, assistant professor at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a co-author on the paper.

The researchers found that a specific type of neuron in the PZ that makes the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is responsible for deep sleep. They used a set of innovative tools to precisely control these neurons remotely, in essence giving them the ability to turn the neurons on and off at will.

"These new molecular approaches allow unprecedented control over brain function at the cellular level," says Christelle Ancelet, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard School of Medicine. "Before these tools were developed, we often used 'electrical stimulation' to activate a region, but the problem is that doing so stimulates everything the electrode touches and even surrounding areas it didn't. It was a sledgehammer approach, when what we needed was a scalpel."

"To get the precision required for these experiments, we introduced a virus into the PZ that expressed a 'designer' receptor on GABA neurons only but didn't otherwise alter brain function," explains Patrick Fuller, assistant professor at Harvard and senior author on the paper. "When we turned on the GABA neurons in the PZ, the animals quickly fell into a deep sleep without the use of sedatives or sleep aids."

How these neurons interact in the brain with other sleep and wake-promoting brain regions still need to be studied, the researchers say, but eventually these findings may translate into new medications for treating sleep disorders, including insomnia, and the development of better and safer anesthetics.

"We are at a truly transformative point in neuroscience," says Bass, "where the use of designer genes gives us unprecedented ability to control the brain. We can now answer fundamental questions of brain function, which have traditionally been beyond our reach, including the 'why' of sleep, one of the more enduring mysteries in the neurosciences."

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Nasa says new heavy-lift rocket debut not likely until 2018

CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida): Nasa's new heavy-lift rocket, designed to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and eventually Mars, likely will not have its debut test flight until November 2018, nearly a year later than previous estimates, agency officials said on Wednesday.

Nasa is 70 percent confident of making a November 2018 launch date, given the technical, financial and management hurdles the Space Launch System faces on the road to development, Nasa associate administrators Robert Lightfoot and Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters on a conference call.

Nasa estimates it could spend almost $12 billion developing the first of three variations of the rocket and associated ground systems through the debut flight, and potentially billions more to build and fly heavier-lift next-generation boosters, a July 2014 General Accountability Office report on the program said.

While the rocket might be ready for a test flight in December 2017, as previously planned, the new assessment showed the odds of that were "significantly less" than the 70 percent confidence level Nasa requires of new programs, Gerstenmaier said.

"We want to commit to this (November 2018) date and show that we can meet it," added Lightfoot.

The schedule assumes flat annual budgets of about $1.3 billion for the SLS rocket and another $1.5 billion for Orion crew capsule and associated ground launch systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The GAO report found that Nasa's SLS rocket program was about $400 million short of meeting its December 2017 target.

The rocket is a modified version of the shuttle-derived, heavy-lift booster developed under Nasa's previous exploration initiative known as Constellation.

The US space agency spent about $9 billion on Constellation, which included the Orion capsule, from 2005 to 2010, before President Obama axed the program. Its goal was to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2020.

Instead, the White House and Congress approved a flexible path toward Mars, including a visit to an asteroid that will be robotically relocated into a high lunar orbit.

Nasa did not say if the 11-month slip in the new rocket's debut flight, which will be an unmanned test run around the moon, would impact the second mission, slated for 2021, with a two-member crew.

Initially, the SLS rocket, which uses leftover space shuttle main engines and shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters, will be able to put about 77 tons (70 metric tons) into an orbit about 100 miles (160 km) above Earth. Later versions are expected to carry nearly twice that load. Ultimately, the rocket is expected to be used to launch astronauts and equipment to Mars.

"Our nation has embarked on a very ambitious space exploration program and we owe it to the American taxpayers to get this right," Lightfoot said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smallest galaxy with supermassive blackhole found

Some 54 million light years away, an unfolding cosmic drama involving a one-of-a-kind tiny galaxy has been discovered by an international team of scientists, led by Indian origin astronomer Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

The scene involves three players: the ultracompact dwarf galaxy which harbors a supermassive black hole, a giant galaxy, and a third normal galaxy which is heading towards a collision with the giant.

The ultracompact galaxy, named M60-UCD1, is one of its kind because it is the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking black hole at its centre.

"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Seth, lead author of the study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black hole-dominated galaxies known."

The black hole has a mass equal to 21 million suns small galaxy. Compare this to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: its mass is a mere 4 million suns, making up less than 0.01 percent of the Milky Way's total mass, estimated at some 50 billion solar masses. The newly discovered unltracompact dwarf galaxy's black hole is a stunning 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass of 140 million suns. These dwarf galaxies are less than a few hundred light years across compared with our Milky Way's 100,000-light-year diameter.

"That is pretty amazing, given that the Milky Way is 500 times larger and more than 1,000 times heavier than the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1," Seth says.

"We believe this once was a very big galaxy with maybe 10 billion stars in it, but then it passed very close to the center of an even larger galaxy, M60, and in that process all the stars and dark matter in the outer part of the galaxy got torn away and became part of M60," he says. "That was maybe as much as 10 billion years ago. We don't know."

Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes - and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Seth says ultracompact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 may be doomed, although he cannot say when because the dwarf galaxy's orbit around M60 isn't known. "Eventually, this thing may merge with the center of M60, which has a monster black hole in it, with 4.5 billion solar masses - more than 1,000 times bigger than the supermassive black hole in our galaxy. When that happens, the black hole we found in M60-UCD1 will merge with that monster black hole."

Meanwhile, M60 is also pulling in another galaxy, named NGC4647. M60 is about 25 times more massive than NGC4647. Ultimately, these two will also collide.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Nasa says new heavy-lift rocket debut not likely until 2018

CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida): Nasa's new heavy-lift rocket, designed to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and eventually Mars, likely will not have its debut test flight until November 2018, nearly a year later than previous estimates, agency officials said on Wednesday.

Nasa is 70 percent confident of making a November 2018 launch date, given the technical, financial and management hurdles the Space Launch System faces on the road to development, Nasa associate administrators Robert Lightfoot and Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters on a conference call.

Nasa estimates it could spend almost $12 billion developing the first of three variations of the rocket and associated ground systems through the debut flight, and potentially billions more to build and fly heavier-lift next-generation boosters, a July 2014 General Accountability Office report on the program said.

While the rocket might be ready for a test flight in December 2017, as previously planned, the new assessment showed the odds of that were "significantly less" than the 70 percent confidence level Nasa requires of new programs, Gerstenmaier said.

"We want to commit to this (November 2018) date and show that we can meet it," added Lightfoot.

The schedule assumes flat annual budgets of about $1.3 billion for the SLS rocket and another $1.5 billion for Orion crew capsule and associated ground launch systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The GAO report found that Nasa's SLS rocket program was about $400 million short of meeting its December 2017 target.

The rocket is a modified version of the shuttle-derived, heavy-lift booster developed under Nasa's previous exploration initiative known as Constellation.

The US space agency spent about $9 billion on Constellation, which included the Orion capsule, from 2005 to 2010, before President Obama axed the program. Its goal was to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2020.

Instead, the White House and Congress approved a flexible path toward Mars, including a visit to an asteroid that will be robotically relocated into a high lunar orbit.

Nasa did not say if the 11-month slip in the new rocket's debut flight, which will be an unmanned test run around the moon, would impact the second mission, slated for 2021, with a two-member crew.

Initially, the SLS rocket, which uses leftover space shuttle main engines and shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters, will be able to put about 77 tons (70 metric tons) into an orbit about 100 miles (160 km) above Earth. Later versions are expected to carry nearly twice that load. Ultimately, the rocket is expected to be used to launch astronauts and equipment to Mars.

"Our nation has embarked on a very ambitious space exploration program and we owe it to the American taxpayers to get this right," Lightfoot said.

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sleep switch discovered deep inside the brain

In a major breakthrough, scientists have found a sleep switch buried deep in the most primitive part of the brain. Neurons or brain cells located in this tiny region release a messenger chemical called GABA that sets of a series of steps leading to deep sleep. The discovery may lead to therapies for curing sleeplessness, a growing disorder across the world.

The discovery was made by researchers at Harvard School of Medicine and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and published online in the August issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The sleep switch is located in the parafacial zone (PZ) in the brainstem. The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain that regulates basic functions necessary for survival, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. The study demonstrates that fully half of all of the brain's sleep-promoting activity originates from this zone. The activity of this "sleep node" appears to be both necessary and sufficient to produce deep sleep.

"The close association of a sleep center with other regions that are critical for life highlights the evolutionary importance of sleep in the brain," says Caroline E. Bass, assistant professor at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a co-author on the paper.

The researchers found that a specific type of neuron in the PZ that makes the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is responsible for deep sleep. They used a set of innovative tools to precisely control these neurons remotely, in essence giving them the ability to turn the neurons on and off at will.

"These new molecular approaches allow unprecedented control over brain function at the cellular level," says Christelle Ancelet, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard School of Medicine. "Before these tools were developed, we often used 'electrical stimulation' to activate a region, but the problem is that doing so stimulates everything the electrode touches and even surrounding areas it didn't. It was a sledgehammer approach, when what we needed was a scalpel."

"To get the precision required for these experiments, we introduced a virus into the PZ that expressed a 'designer' receptor on GABA neurons only but didn't otherwise alter brain function," explains Patrick Fuller, assistant professor at Harvard and senior author on the paper. "When we turned on the GABA neurons in the PZ, the animals quickly fell into a deep sleep without the use of sedatives or sleep aids."

How these neurons interact in the brain with other sleep and wake-promoting brain regions still need to be studied, the researchers say, but eventually these findings may translate into new medications for treating sleep disorders, including insomnia, and the development of better and safer anesthetics.

"We are at a truly transformative point in neuroscience," says Bass, "where the use of designer genes gives us unprecedented ability to control the brain. We can now answer fundamental questions of brain function, which have traditionally been beyond our reach, including the 'why' of sleep, one of the more enduring mysteries in the neurosciences."

22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sleep switch discovered deep inside the brain

In a major breakthrough, scientists have found a sleep switch buried deep in the most primitive part of the brain. Neurons or brain cells located in this tiny region release a messenger chemical called GABA that sets of a series of steps leading to deep sleep. The discovery may lead to therapies for curing sleeplessness, a growing disorder across the world.

The discovery was made by researchers at Harvard School of Medicine and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and published online in the August issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The sleep switch is located in the parafacial zone (PZ) in the brainstem. The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain that regulates basic functions necessary for survival, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. The study demonstrates that fully half of all of the brain's sleep-promoting activity originates from this zone. The activity of this "sleep node" appears to be both necessary and sufficient to produce deep sleep.

"The close association of a sleep center with other regions that are critical for life highlights the evolutionary importance of sleep in the brain," says Caroline E. Bass, assistant professor at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a co-author on the paper.

The researchers found that a specific type of neuron in the PZ that makes the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is responsible for deep sleep. They used a set of innovative tools to precisely control these neurons remotely, in essence giving them the ability to turn the neurons on and off at will.

"These new molecular approaches allow unprecedented control over brain function at the cellular level," says Christelle Ancelet, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard School of Medicine. "Before these tools were developed, we often used 'electrical stimulation' to activate a region, but the problem is that doing so stimulates everything the electrode touches and even surrounding areas it didn't. It was a sledgehammer approach, when what we needed was a scalpel."

"To get the precision required for these experiments, we introduced a virus into the PZ that expressed a 'designer' receptor on GABA neurons only but didn't otherwise alter brain function," explains Patrick Fuller, assistant professor at Harvard and senior author on the paper. "When we turned on the GABA neurons in the PZ, the animals quickly fell into a deep sleep without the use of sedatives or sleep aids."

How these neurons interact in the brain with other sleep and wake-promoting brain regions still need to be studied, the researchers say, but eventually these findings may translate into new medications for treating sleep disorders, including insomnia, and the development of better and safer anesthetics.

"We are at a truly transformative point in neuroscience," says Bass, "where the use of designer genes gives us unprecedented ability to control the brain. We can now answer fundamental questions of brain function, which have traditionally been beyond our reach, including the 'why' of sleep, one of the more enduring mysteries in the neurosciences."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/followceleb.cms?alias=University of Buffalo School of Medicine,Sleep switch,Harvard School of Medicine

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22.10 | 0 komentar | Read More