Canary, candidate for the giant telescope

Canary increse their possibilities to take the 30-meter telescope. A delegation of American scientists has spent three days on the island of La Palma to study the conditions of the observatory and they recognize that Canary is economically the most profitable option.The director os the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, Rafael Rebolo, after the work of technical committee of the telescope TMT agree that Canary have a very serious option to ensure the success of this project. These specialists collectes information to consider the Canary candidacy as an alternative to build this telescope.

This enourous project of 1,400 million of investment in cutting-edge science is blocked since 2014. The idea was to raise the telescope TMT in Hawaii, but legal issues have been an impediment to the construction: the courts have recognized that not met requirements to build it in Mauna Kea, a sacred mountain  according to the native religion of Hawaiians and it  has special environmental and cultural protection.The chief operating officer of TMT, Christophe Dumas, recognize that they can't wait any longer. Hawaii is the favorite place to build and thei are going to gove them a few months but if finally they can't carry out the project in Hawaii they have to choose an alternative place. "Time is money" say Dumas.

A team of five people in the TMT has been studying the feasibility of La Palma: geophysical conditions of the island, the quality of the sky to know the percentage of nights that can make science and the infrastructure of the observatory, which are very good and has been hosting telescopes from several countries during decades.

Dumas also admit that in Canarias the cost of operation is less than elsewhere because the fact that the physical and digital communication infrastructures are already built would save many investments. The team was serching for potential sites for the giant telescope, which aims to observe points unseen of the universe, and now by an informatic analyze they want see what would be the optimal point depending on the winds and orography.

Digital data storage in DNA

The demand for data storage increases sharply. The rate at which these needs increase will make that very soon we will find the problem that the means at our disposal are not enough to accommodate the huge volume of information. According to Microsoft in 2017 this demand will be about 16 zettabytes, a volume that supports we use today are not prepared to accept. Although the improvemant of the optical discs we still needed million units to store 1 zettabyte (approximately 1,000 million terabytes), which also mean a significant physical space, too. 

With the aim of revolutionize the digital data storage, Redmond are collaborating with Twist Bioscience, a company specializing in biotechnology based in San Francisco, and with the University of Washington to use DNA as a means to store information in a small space.

The genetic material is an attractive alternative for this purpose because it is extremely dense (up to 1 exabyte per cubic millimeter) and very durable (it has a half life of over 500 years). However, the great difficulty to store digital data in DNA is that the processes of reading and writing are not simple.

To carry out this project, Microsoft has bought 10 million Twist DNA strands. According to the cooperation agreement, the corporation will provide the data as a digital sequence, and Twist will convert it to a physical form through synthetic biology techniques.

To encode digital data into a DNA strand the researchers convert digital zeros and ones of the file in combinations of the four elements that form the molecules of genetic material (adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine). According to Microsoft, in a single gram of DNA it could store 1,000 million terabytes.

This news set out one of the problems that maybe nobody had think about. In last years we are collecting and storing enourmous amounts of data and information, but the space we have to keep it is not unlimited. It means that we have a limit and acording to the news this is not far away. It's also true that the means to keep information has improve a lot but it is still not enough so we need alternatives and it's when we turn to see science and technology working together. Thanks to bioteclogy, that it's a field that is in constantly improving over the years, now Microsoft seems that have the solution to do problem. What Microsoft propose is really very difficult and have a lot of complications, but we can't say no just satrting, so we only can wait to see what happend and trust in science. 

Genetic modification at service of cancer

CRISPR is a kind of genetic manipulation that has also been at the service of oncology. From the Novartis Boston Research Institut (NBIR), an old candy factory, not far from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rob McDonald, one of the researchers, explain how they use the famous genetic scissors discovered by the scientific Doudna and Charpentire to try to develop new drugs against different types of cancer.

McDonald explains that cancer is a complex genetic disease, and although the tumor initially responds to treatment, we know that is able to develop resistance because has secondary mutations, usually in tumor suppressor genes (that are the responses to the control of tumor cells). "If those guards are mutated or missing, how can we attack them, if they are not already?"

Thanks, CRISPR technology scientific from NIBR are putting one by one million of genes to checking how it affects to the tumor cell and  tries to accelerate the discovery of new anticancer molecules. In this old candy factory, they are working with 400 cell lines, 19000 genes and about 76000 million cells that could cover an entire baseball field. This new kind of technology suppose a titanic effort, says McDonald, and it would be impossible without the new genetic technology that is not only apparently simple (its use has spread quickly to all fields of science), but also very cheap (about $ 20-30 per gene, compared to a previous edition genetic technology, TALEN, which could cost up to around $ 4,000 per gene).Technology allows doing precise changes in the DNA cells to try to answer a question: Is it important that gene for the survival of tumor cells? And consequently, is not is a good candidate to try to attack with a drug potential?

Although this application now seems to have their main potential in the field of drug development it is not the only one. Laboratories around the world are also exploring the therapeutic potential of this genetic technology in the treatment of cancer patients. In 2015, researchers at the Eliza Hall Institute (Australia) demonstrated  that this technique was able to remove Burkitt lymphoma cells by deleting the gene (MCL1) responsible for keeping alive the tumor cells. And from the same NIBR, in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania, the use of CRISPR has been investigated to improve the effectiveness of treatment with modified cells. This hematologist showed few years ago that modify genetically the patient own cells in the laboratory and then transfering this cells to the patient allowed to control certain hematological tumors, mainly leukemia. This cells from the laboratory have already proved effective in a group of 36 children with lymphoblastic leukemia who had not responded to other treatments.

Glen Dranoff is the responsible for Immuno-Oncology at NIBR. He explains that CRISPR could improve the control of the defensive cells and make them more powerful.  Although he is very cautious about the therapeutic potential of genetics in cancer cells edition: "Of course there is much interest, but we are not there yet. At the moment, CRISPR is a very potent drug development tool." And Glen Dranoff is right. In the clinic, there is some risk you don't have in the laboratory like the security. Because at the end you are making changes in the genome and you have to be very sure of what you do. 

NASA asteroid hunter

NASA has spent two years investigating the asteroids and comets of our Solar System. Their objective is to protect the Erth from the objects that could easily crash against the Erth. Because of that, NASA has carried out and investigation of two years with their Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer for Polling Near Earth Object (NEOWISE) and now we are able to know what they have found. According to NASA, NEOWISE has categorized 439 near objects to Erth (or NEOs, the name to describe any asteroid or comet approaching Erth). In the group of 439 objects, a total of 72 were unknowing for all the scientific world. 

The sounding line was thrown in 2009 to space and it was deactivated in 2011 when their mission was completed. But in December of 2013, it was reactivated to help astronomers to track NEOs and be aware if we run some risk of been impacted. During last year, NEOWISE collect about 5.1 millions of images and it also measured more than 19000 asteroids. Then, NASA could reduce the number to 439 NEOs that only 8 has been classification as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs). 

NEOWISE is not the unique ship that it's working to keep the NEOs under control. It's only a part of the system. NEOWISE discover NEOs that are big and dark and that kind of discovery help astronomers to complete the net of ground-based telescopes that work with visible wavelengths with light. 

As far as we think, the Solar System is a very crowded place. There are a lot of comets, meteorites, and asteroids that are plough through the universe. Having into a count the big distance presents in space, all of them comes from very far, many come from millions of light years away and there are some that approach only one time each long time. In this sense, the universe is full of life!
But, how many times we have think about a catastrophe produced by the impact of an enormous meteorite? Or how many films can we find about this kind of thematic? Only think about the main hypothesis we have today about the dinosaur extinction: the impact of a big meteorite. Because of that, NASA proposed to keep an eye in any NEOs that could complicate the life of our planet.

The number of executions in the world returns to Cold War levels

According to with what International Amnesty has announced in their annual report, 2015 was the year with the largest number of death penalties carried out in more than 25 years. A total of 1634 people were executed what is the highest figure recorded since 1989. This number also suppose an increase of 573 cases with respect to 2014. The global increase of this data is because of three countries: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan wich were responsable of the 89% of the death penalty cases during 2015. Another cause of concern is the increase in the number of countries around the world that apply this penalty last year. If in 2014 were 22 countries, the last 2015 the number rise until 25. One of the new countries that are now in the statistics is Chad, where the last august 10 presumed terrorist were shooted.

 

The director who carries out the study concludes that 2015 was a year of extremes because it let us both good and bad news. On one hand we have and increase the number of death penalties but on the other hand, 2015 was the year when the majority of the world, 102, countries abolish completely this kind of sentences. Some of this new countries are Madagascar, Republic of Congo or Mongolia. 

But there is another bad data. Inside of the 1634 sentences does not include China ones because this kind of data is a state secret. Although International Amnesty esteem that about thousands of people were executed last year in this country. China leads the listing of the countries with more executions per year and it's followed by Iran, that executed at leats 977 people in 2015, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Besides Iran apply the death penalty to minors so it means that the country violates the international right. By the other way, Pakistan killed 320 people and in Arabia the number of people executed by sentences like the beheading increase in a 79% in relation with 2014. 

Chiara Sangiorgio, who is an expert in the death penalty, argue that the government say that they use this kind of sentence referring to the keep of national security. The true governments use them to create an emotional response in the citizens and not to make the nation more secure. 

There are also a lot of countries where the international rules about fair trials are infringed because these country use tortures or threats to obtain confessions. In addition, a lot of countries use this kind of sentence to condemn crimes related with drugs or money that have any relation with death crimes what are the only ones for which there is an international law that allows the use of this practice.

This news surprised me, not only because of the increase in the number of cases where the death sentence was applied during last year but also because it made me see how different things are and how little we know about what really happens. The news shocks me because I used to think that the death sentences were something of the past but the fact is that 2015 has been the year with the largest number of executions in last 25 years and it shows us that it's something very real and it's happening every day. 

Another thing that can surprise us is that the United States are the number seven in the list of the countries that use this sentences. All we know about the death sentence in the United States but I didn't know that it was used as much. 

Well, maybe we can have the feeling that things are changing very fast but the reality is very different to this feeling.

Hey Planet Nine fans...

By twitter the astronomer Mike Brown, from the Universiti of Caltech (USA) awake new expectations about what can be the ninth planet in our Solar System. Mike Brown? Yes, the same scientific who reduce in rank the planet Pluto to the disgraceful category of "short planet". Brown announcement the discovery after present it in SETI, the organisation dedicated to exploring the universe and search intelligent live out of the Erth.

According to the first estimations the hypothetic ninth planet should be describing a super-orbit around the Sun that will make him take about 10.000 and 20.000 years to complete it. However, thanks to the new discovery of a new Kuiper belt (KBO) there is more evidence to believe in the real existence of a new plant. Mike Brown explains that when they saw a strange signal in the records they notice that something strange was happening. The strange signal was described as a heavy gravitational force which was able to drag little objects in specific areas of the Solar System. And the only explication is that only a mass with a big volume can produce an effect like this. The estimations about this ninth planet say that it is 10 times bigger that the Erth and is located about 149 billion kilometers from the Sun.

All these new discoveries have been possible thanks to the Canada, Franç Hawai Telescope wich is working in the development of the study of the beginning of the Outside Solar System (OSSOS). Because of scientifics are talking about something that is happening in an extremely large distance they can't support or confirm the existence of the ninth planet. They should wait for more evidence.

Besides the Brown study, it has been developed in parallel another study lead by the astronomer professor Daniel Whitmire who affirm that the existence of this ninth planet could be linked with the massive extinction in the Erth. Acording with Whitmire study this ninth planet trigger comet shower every time it completes a whole orbit around the sun. It happens every 27 million years and when in take place the planet makes that comets impact against the planets of the Solar System. Appareny the ninth planet keeps key answers about the running of the whole Solar System.

Recently astronomers are making great discoveries and they are also carrying out amazing investigations. In last years, we have seen new projects to find live in other planets and now we are witnessing discoveries like the gravitational waves or this one about the existence of a ninth planet in our system. All these new discoveries have a grat impact in the last hypothesis we believe about the beginning of the universe or the causes of the extinction of dinosaurs. I think it's amazing and we are only at the beginning so it means that there are a lot of new things to know that could allow us to understand a little bit better the place we live. I think we are very lucky to live in an era when each day we advance and we progress a little more. We live in an era when a lot of discoveries have taken place and all make progress very quickly. It means that maybe in few years we can have a completely different idea of the universe. I think it's great, nothing it's predictable, now we can't know with wich technology we'll be living or how will be our daily routines. It can be a little frightened, too, but I think we are in the progress line.

364 Expedition

Many years ago, when humans still didn't exist, took place on catastrophic fact wich was responsible for deleting the dinosaurs from the visage of the earth. Many years ago an immense meteorite more than 10 Km in diameter crashed into the Erth. Now, the project waited by researchers is about to carry on: drilling under the ocean bed of the Chicxulub crater, the enormous hole opened 66 million years ago where now we know as Yucatan peninsula (Mexic). 

On 13th of April, an international scientific team will set off from the Mexico gulf to the drill platform which is 30Km open sea. This will be the first time that the crater has a submarine drilling. The main question the project try to work out is: what that impact was so catastrophic? The scientific team tries to get more knowledge about the formations of the crater and the environmental and ecologic effects of the impact. Another of the objectives is to study what were the conditions that make possible the return of the sea life in the area after the impact. 

The drillings will take place in a characteristic structure that also have other craters on the Moon or in Mart. This position is know as rings-peaks and is circular mountain ranges. The crater is about 180 and 200 Km in diameter. On earth, there are only two bigger and both are also older, one is in Vredefort (South Africa) and the other one in Canada, both formed 2000 million years ago. The problem is that the zone has been modifying by the erosion and can't be investigate properly by scientific. 

The plan for the study is to drill 500m the first week and then over tow month drill one kilometer more checking the surface and collecting signs of minerals and fossils. But the scientific team in charge of the project are sure that it could figure out more mysteries that they have been bottomless until now, for example, the global warming wich took place 55 million years ago and was responsible for the end of the giant birds.


It seems unreal that now, after millions of years, we can know that one-day enormous dinosaurs walk the earth for thousand of years. I think it's incredible how analyzing the earth we can know how was the Erth millions of years ago, who lived in there or what happened. These kind o studies are like "the pictures were never made" because they give us a real image of the world. Maybe we can think that the study of the dinosaurs has no relation with us because they lived million of years before the humans, but the fact is that their extinction makes possible the life of the mammals and, therefore, the evolution till our times. 

ExoMars 2016

Europ is ready to carry out their last change is the spy: land in Mart. The next Monday, a Russian rocket will take off to start the important spy mission more beyond Earth orbit that has never realised the European Space Agency (ESA). This mission is the first part of ExoMars project wich aims to search for life on Mars. 

The fact of sending a rocket to Mart suppose a huge deployment of technology. Until then both USA and Russia are the only ones able to land on Mars. The problem is the thin atmosphere of the planet. But the next ESA mission will try a new lander wich has been designed particularly to the enter in Mart. In addition, this new vehicle will try more kinds of landing as well as parachute, a heat shield and also retros.

The new ESA mission will be realized in collaboration with Rusia and with the rocket will also travel a satellite to study the gases. One of the biggest secrets of the red planet is the presence of methane gas in the atmosphere. In Erth, this gas is a signal of life and because of that one of the main objectives of the satellite will be analyse the atmosphere. According to the experts of the mission, the capacity of this satellite is such that will mark whether it is worthwhile or not to continue the search for life on Mars. Another instrument that will travel in the rocket next Monday is a machine to search for underground ice water.

The mission will take three months to reach the planet. This is the first time that different objectives are combined in a single mission. And this is what makes the mission more complicated. ExoMars 2016 will help to determinate where could land the future mission that Europe will throw in 2018 if is possible a place with water where we can find life on Mars. The final decision about the right place to land will be take on 2017. 

Personally, this is a kind of theme I really like and I really enjoy to read in news, too. I tink that one of the fields with more future forecasts is the field of astronomy. In the last years, we have made important advances and the fast progress and improvement of technology are allowing us to enlarge our expectations and also our possibilities. A few years ago we were asking ourselves if it would be possible to reach the moon and now we are seriously considering the possibility to find live on other planets, what will be the next?

The Hatton Garden theft

The Hatton Garden is the largest theft in England, but it is not knowing, for this reason, The Hatton Garden is known because of the robbers.They are pensioners. The authors are seven and all of them have already been sentenced to prison. They have an age between 59 and 79 years old and all of them have an old and extensive career in the world of crime. The defendants burst into a security room from the diamonds district in London and they took a loot wich is value in 14 million pounds. 

Who is considered to be the leader, Brian Reader (also knowing as The Master), could not be tried because of his health. The Master is 77 years old is now in the intensive care unit watch over nine armed officers. His lawyer has asked to revoke the sentence because of his poor state of health. 

The high punishment in Egland for theft that is not in houses are 10 years. The other three leaders of the robbery, John Collins (75 years old), Daniel Jones (61 years old) and Terry Perkins (67 years old), had been convicted to seven years in prison, and the other two more accomplices, Carl Wood (59 years old) and William Lincoln (60 years old), has also been convicted to six and seven years of prison. 

The band members were suffering from typical diseases of people their age like diabetes, arthritis, and urinary incontinence. They planned the robbery during three years and they could take the jewelry from 73 security boxes after bursting into the room through a hole drilled in a concrete wall half a meter thick. The loot has not been repaired completely, some objects are still missing and it is suspected that some of them to have already been out of the country. 

I have found this news very funny although it may not be. I'm imagining the situation: seven retired that between the game of dominoes and card game at the bar engaged in planning the large-scale theft. And what is the best: they carry it out and it works! 

We are in an age where there are no thieves but hackers. All companies, banks and also ordinary people care more about the security of their computers and information systems than about their material things. And these seven thieves have star in a robbery at the old-fashioned. They had an schematic plan to follow organized and planned in a perfect way. They have have the leading role in a type of theft increasingly rare. They also know what they were doing because they didn't let any physical trace during the two nights that lasted the theft. But they make a unique mistake that we can say is only one they can make because they are not used to new technologies: license plate readers and modern microphones. 

It's not to praise the robbers but we must recognize that the facts have their grace and they can be the perfect plot for a Hollywood film. 

News

Hands Free by Google

Google has started with his new mobile-phone payment system that allows the user to ay without have t use the hands. This is what Google has called Hans Free and allows people to buy items using only the voice.
The new app uses a combination of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and location service to detect when you are n a store where you can use the Hands-Free. The way it works seems to be apparently easy: first of all, you have to configure your smartphone with the app and introduce your personal information as your credit card number or your picture. Then you can complete your transaction saying "I want to pay with Google". Then the app will verify your identity and you will be ready to use the Hands-Free.

The Hands-Free is still an experiment but the company believes that it represents how could be the future of mobile payments.

At the moment, Hands Free is only available in few McDonald's and Papa John in the zone where Google started to prove this system but the company has obtained positive results wich show how people are adopting the new Android payment method. Google has registered an average of 1,5 million of new registers every month since they started to prove Hands Free last year. 

This is the video that Google has made to promote his new system of payment. Google says that it's is the best way to simplify your life. We have a lot of other things to think about and where to take the money can't be another one to worried about. In addition, there are a lot of times we can't remember where we have put our wallet. So for this reason, Goole has created a new way to pay from our smartphone. It's true that nowadays there are some similar systems to pay from our mobile phone but this one use the voice of the user to make the payment. 

Sincerely I don't think it's a good invention. The excuse to make it doesn't have much sense, too. Are we really as busy to can't pay by ourselves? Is it really as difficult as Google sais to pay with our credit cards? of course, no. It's true that at first it can seem to be really cool and useful, but it actually is one of this kind of invents that seems to want to change the world but it isn't really necessary. And I think that Hands-Free will bring more problems, than benefits. 

News

The Disturbing Effect Our Beauty Standards Have on Women Across the World

The Illusionists is a documentary made by the filmmaker Elena Rossini to explore the ideals of beauty in the occidental countries. Elena Rossini has been travelling around eight countries throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia over the course of seven years.

"We're losing bodies as fast as we're losing languages," says the British psychotherapist Susie Orbach in the documentary. Others experts have also commented the documentary and they criticise how the ideals of beauty are affecting all kind of people: "Actually, man-made Western beauty ideals have spread to the rest of the world through globalization and are now being upheld as models even in places like India and Japan".

The Western ideals of beauty are penetrated in all the cultures of the world and they are causing several health problems. For example, the eating disorders to achieve the "ideal" thin body are increasing and not only is the USA but in other parts of the world.Rossini has created this documentary because he sees the  body dissatisfaction like an epidemic that has appeared in different cultures.

Japan is one example of this globalization of the Western ideals f beauty that has affected their society. Japanese women are under incredible pressure to have an ideal body. Japanese culture has always had distinct standards of beauty like curvy figures that were associated with positive values like wealth and fertility.But since the decade of the 1980s the Japanese women are trying to copy the body of Western. As a consequence, currently about 30% of the women in their 20s are underweight.

The fact of the globalization and the power that have the American media has exported their ideas of beauty to the rest of the world. Japanese people, for example, see in the magazines the bodies of the models that are thin, with long legs and they also want to be like them.

Another country that is affected for the Wester world is Libano, which is the country with the most plastic surgery procedures. In this country, the ideals of Western countries are related to being rich. People see the famous characters and the money they earn and associate the fact to be like them with have money. It's also in this way because not everybody can afford the surgery. But in Libano to be like Western models are not only a equated to wealth but with happiness. People in this countries think that been like Western people is important for their career or have good friends.

But this increasing interest to become "perfect" has been noticed in the number of cases of eating disorders. The number of cases has increased in the last years and they are affecting young people each time. In India, girls are fighting to have the image that has never been considered like "beauty" in their country.

How to fight against this change of the image is a question that a lot of professionals are trying to answer. Most of theme think that the key is in the individuals, if all the women should look at the mirror and if they liked what they saw, then we would have to remodel the capitalism form. We can finish with this system of oppression and manipulation, we only have to realize that everybody is different and it is not an imperfection.

                                 

News

The quest to conquer the other North Pole

A British team is planning to sett of a trip to conquer the center of the Arctic Ocean where there is a Pole that hasn’t been walked on yet. Artic Pole is the point that it’s further from any speck of land. This trip means more than 1000Km trough an unforgiving place in the most remote location. 

Next year’s expedition will be the third attempt of Jim McNeill’s. The other two times he can’t complete his plans due to a heavy storm the first time and because of an infection he gets at the second time.

The story said that was in 1950 when the Pole was reheard for the first time by a Soviet Expedition. This Expedition builds a hut there and they also put a bust of Lenin. When in 2007 the station was revisited the bust was the only thing visible in the snow. 

A lot of explorers have thought that they have been in the Artic Pole: first the Australian polar explorer Hubert Wilkins in 1927 and then the British Wally Herbert after 5900Km by feet over the Arctic Ocean in the 60s, but was McNeill who first thinks that the coordinates were wrong and effectivity they were.  A Scientific group, using their satellites, could prove that the real “Northern Pole of Inaccessibility” was 214Km away from the old point. 

In 2013 were announced the new coordinates so it means that, at the moment, nobody has arrived at the “real Pole” yet. 

The Pole can be reached by trekking across the ice that covers the ocean. The temperature in this part of the world can be -50C in winter and from October to March is completely dark. But even so McNeill has planned his third trip. It will take theme about 80 days and they will measuring the ice to help to compile information about who is the ice breaking up. 

The climate change is changing the Pole quickly. In few years, the Inaccessible point could be reached easily because of the boats could sail more Km inside the ice. This fact makes the expedition harder and dangerous. McNeill and his team will be starting the journey this winter and they hope to can be cross the ice before it starts to melt. 

Well, it seems an amazing expedition through the Pole and I really look up to theme but if they offered me to go very likely I would say no. Of course going to the Pole may be an amazing thing but these kinds of expeditions are one of the hardest! 

I find amusing and surprising the fact that, at the moment, nobody has arrived at the Pole yet! On the one hand, we have all those who follow some bad coordinates. The amusing fact is that they think they were in a good place. I also think that the Russians who carry with the bust of Lenin to the Pole were so much convinced about what they were doing… and there remains it!

But when you read that there still are a place in the world where humans have never been before…is astonish. Nowadays we are exploring new planets or new galaxies that they are billions light years from here and there still places in our own world where we have never been before. And now I’m not referring only to this part of the Pole but, for example, to the deep ocean. 

But finally it seems that we could cross off one more place on our list of places to conquer.

Luna27

The return of humans to the Moon

European and Russian space agencies are preparing a new space mission to come back to the mood. They want to explore the Moon’s south pole and search water and raw materials to make fuel there and, if is possible, settle down permanently. The mission is called Luna27 and is set to carry out in five years.

According to Prof Igor Mitrofanov, of the Space Research Institute in Moscow, the 21st century will be the permanent outpost of human civilization. Mitrofanov says that all the countries have to work together, not as the 60s and 70s when the first world powers competed for the “special race”.

In this way, one of the first intentions of the new head of the European Space Agency was to create an international group of work to build the mission.

The initial mission will be robotic. Luna27 will land in the darkness part of the Moon which is one of the coldest parts of the solar system. There can be icy water or chemical substance that the sun hit has not damage. Scientific think the South pole of the Moon is a completely different environment with an extreme cold and, for this reason, you could find water-ice and the chemistry which is in the surface.

Scientifics from the mission also think that the fact of building a permanent human presence in the Moon surfaces will have a lot of benefits: for astronomical observations, the use of minerals and other resources from the Moon or as a starting point for the future flight to Mars.

Nowadays there are already partners who are developing a new type of landing system able to decide for itself which area is safe of not for the landing. Europe is also proving the drill which should go down and collect all kind of materials and substances. And a miniaturized laboratory will be provided for the searching of the key ingredients with which oxygen, fuel and water could be made.

This sentence summarizes the importance of this mission for the scientifics and the humanity: "This whole series of missions feels like the beginning of the return to the Moon, but it is also starting something new in terms of overall exploration of the Solar System,"

News

'3D Cryosat' tracks Arctic winter sea ice

Europe's Cryosat spacecraft monitors the thickness of the ice in the far north of the Earth. In 2013 we saw the thinnes winter ice ever. This year, in February, we could see an ice layer 25cm thiker. But anyway the trend is go down. 

One researcher from the UK's Nerc Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling says we have seen high levels of Arctic sea ice and thickness volume in the last years. But it isn't a good reference. What people should watch is the sea ice volume because it proof how much ice is left. What we need to understand is the process that have caused the change of the climate in the Artic and it also can help us to know more accurate what may happen in the future.

This year the maximun extent of sea ice was on 25th February and it was the smallest winter maximum in the satellite record. But satellite Cryosat measuring another aspect: the height of the ice near the ocean water. Then experts combining the thinkness and the extent they can calculate the changes in the sea-ice. 

This February Cryosat saw a volume across the Artic of nearly 24.000 km3. In 2013 it was about 21.000 km3. 

Nowaday, Cryosat team is able to turn out the information much faster that five years ago when the project started. And as well as this is the fith anniversary of the satellite, the team is developing a new sistem that works near real-time to improve the work of science and maritime activities.

For example: to move inside the thik sea-ice we need icebreaker ships with strengthened. With Cryosat, now we are able to provide users of the Artic with information of the ice to move quikly and avoid accidents. 

Whereas before Cryosat was only a scientific tool to study the changing environment of the Artic, now it is acting more like satellites tha Europe is providing day to day operational data. 

The European Space Agency's mission manager on Cryosat consideres that this kind of knowledges are becoming a priority for a number of operational and services. For example shipping compaines ask for especific information to operate and sail safely. In this way, a mission like Cryosat has all the characteristics to answer this requirements.

This is a web portal where any user can get information two days after Cryosat had made the observations. It is a series of samplings across the region that can give a clearer idea of the conditions you can find in any part of the Artic. 

Once more we see how science can help any difficulty we have and also helps us to improve all what we do. This time we profit a satellite that scientifics had to study the enviromental changes in Artic to improve the sailing and make it more safe. Obviously all this technologies have a lot of uses and they can help us to make what we do. But certainly we are using a technologie that was create to try to slow the melting as a tool to increase this melting. All the traffic by ship in the Artic cause melting and pollute the Earth, so we are moving to solve the first objective. 

Anyway, this is what science have, evry new discovery or invention have a huge of different uses. Some will be good and others will be bad buet one time that they are think it's impossible to spot any af them. 

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How sitting down all day is literally killing you

Around 12,000 years ago our ancestors decided to abandon their nomadic ways and settle down in communities, They satrt to domesticate animals and grow crops, and they noticed it was much bettrer than spend all day searching for food.  Because imagine spending 12 hours a day looking for food while any predator can attack you.

So when our ancestors began to establish  sedentary communities, they found aour civilization. Over time humns became better in their new way of life and thakns that we could develop cience, art, literature and cultural characteristics. We also started to have hobbies. 

One thing that we all have adopted is a love to sit all day. Indeed we spend half of our lives sitting. We sit in our work, in our car o public transport, when we come home we eat and watch our TV programes sitting. Then we go to sleep and get up inthe morning repeating the same cycle. 

But it is that stay sitting is also a way of relax and if it makes you happy, do it. But there are tow problems: number one, sitting all day goes against human biology ans evolution; and number tow, sitting all day is killing you. 

Humans are the only spece in the planet that could devolp to the capacity to walk on two legs. It also allow us used our hands using toold and it has speed up our evolution. No other animal have the same capacity and we have e better quality of life. But we have regressed in how much time we spend sitting down that it make us have less health.

Researchers has shown that even if you exercise, sitting dow all day can increase your risk of dying from diseases or helth conditions. 

One study, wich monitored 92.000 women during 12 years, showed they had 12% increase of dying from any health condition, 27% from a heart diseases and 21% from cancer if they sat for 11 hours or more a day. 

All this has an impact in our metabolism which remains static and it has all kind of negative concequences on the body. 

Well, there is a simple solution to this: standing. 

Standing up helps you live longer and healthier. Stand up at work, or stand up often as posible during the day and stretch out, go on walks or give up your seat on the bus to someone who really needs it. it could save your life.

We have two legs for a reason and we should use them for what they serve.

This is just and advice to improve our lifes and to realize the kind of life we have and to think if it is the best and the the healthiest. It is true that we speend a lot of houers sitting but I think that they are necessary. We can't speend standing the whole day but sure we can make improvements and go for a walk instead to stay home watchin TV. Or if we have free time we can spend it doing some exercice or meeting by friend outsite instead to stay home doing nothing. Sometimes little changes can improve our life a lot and can make feel us much better, less stressed and stay healthier.  

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Will we ever… speak faster than light speed?

The light speed is about 300.000.000 m/s and it means that the light can make the transatlantic journey between London and New York more than 50 times in a second. With speed like that the questions is: why there is any interest in find a faster than light comunication? Well, maybe in the Earth we could have enouth with 300.000.000 m/s but in the deep-space the messages travelling at the speed of light are too slow yet. 

All that means that it is impossible send messages faster than the light speed without braking the laws of physics. But presently there are some workaround wich hold the promise of Superluminal communication. 

So far, it is not long ago really interests us to develop superluminal messages because it was not necessary for us. We do not have problems if we want to send messages to the Mood (it takes them 1,3 seconds) or if we call someone on the other side of the world. But if we travell further, for example to Mars, we start to have some problems. In Mars messages take 12,5 minutes to arrive at light speed. And the farther you go more problems with communication. For example, to comunicate with Alpha Centauri, our closest star-system, it wouls take more tha four years for each message to be delivered. 

Accordins to Einstein's theory of relativity nothing can go superluminal because the speed of light is a universal constant. If we could discover a way to around this limitation we would be violating the laws and we should make a rethinking of basic physics. 

Today, almost all comunications in space are conduncted using radio waves which travel at the speed of light. We are also developing the optical laser communication. We may not be able to increase the speed of transmission but we can increase the volume of information to transmitte in a second by increasing the bandwidth of the spectrum. 

Perhaps in a future we might find a way to make the speed of the messages seem quicker without interfere in the relative theory. Now we know that this theory allows for things like wormholes that can be explain as warps in spacetime. Other routes have been considered, for example the quantum entanglement, a property which means two particles can share properties regardless of the distance between them. So it means if you change one of them you also change the other and get instantaneous communication. 

If superluminals communication were possible it would have implications for space missions. Sometimes we must wait several minutes to realize that have been a problem in one of our satellites and the comunication is not simple. So nowadays superluminal communication is not possible and it exceeds the limits of scientific possibilitys. 

I have found this new very interesting. Since few years ago we are trying to develop a way to send messages and receive messages as fast as can possible. At moment we always we have encountered with the time barrier and the Einstein's theory od relativity. Without it all our physics laws will not have any sense. And the question there can be: and why try to find somthing that destroy all what we know?

Well the true is that it is the way that the science works. Based on create new theories that including all the thing that we know and when we find somthing new that is not agree whith what we know we must refute the theory and find a new one. 

Sometimes our intentions are who try to destroy a theroy to find a new one which can help us to get what we want. In this case our necessity to find out new ways of live or new places to live are what push us to discover a communication faster that the light speed. 

Anyway we also have found things in the space, like the wormholes, that the Einstein's theoty doesn't works in it. But the problem is that we aren't able to know how wormholes works or what they are. 

The idea of a ney way of comunication, find other worlds to live, new ways of life or simply the idea of the time is not new for us. The films are who have been showing us and who have been inventing and proposing futurist theories. Films are who have been showing us the problems and the paradoxes with which scientists face today (always with a little of fictions because they are just movies). For example, the last I have seen: Interstellar. In there you can find the idea of new dimensions beyond the our idea of the sapce and time (I have to say that it is an amazing film!).

The thing is that our idea of the world and our way to undesrtand it is only our. I mean that the way we know the world and how the thing work are only human ideas that have been invented by humans. All of them can work for us and for what we know until now but, why they must be tha same in the rest of the space? Why they must be true? The porblem is set out like many others. We will be able to find the solution? 

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Healthy dose of hope for one-use syringes

The people who are living in the community of Roka, in Cambodia, are living one of the biggest problems that has been become a real nightmare in the medicine world. The World Health Organisation wants to stamp out with a new politics for the one-use syringes.

In all region families are tring to cope with the frightening mas infection of HIV. Babies, schoolchildren and even the 82-years-old of the local Busshis temple have tasted positive in the infecttion of the HIV. All that only can be explain because of one common factor that links all of them: all of theme have recived injections from a fale dotor who re-using the syringes. 

In this way the virus would have been pass on patient to patient without no relationship between them.  There are furthere rises expected with new tests are carried out. But the virus of HIV is ot the only problem when syrings are reusing more than one time. They can transmit Hepatitis B and C, too, and others diseases. 

The WHO's hope to designed what is calle "auto-disable syringes" wich it's breaks when has been given an injection. But for people from Roka all that is too late, they have already been infected. 

Tola, a women who has been infected with the virus are to sad because she unwittingly passed the virus through her breast milk to his daugther. In his family, for example, the outbreak has affected 19 relations.

Chay Yao, the family matriach, are absolutely anger. He feels pity when he thinks in the future of all the children that has been infected. 

A local chief, Sokhaa Vech sais he saw the unlicensed medic visiting some families and how he used only one syringe to put all the injections. A lot of families that now are infected tooke on his treatment because it was more cheaper than the state ones and they can pay with rice.

So in Roka all that has developed into a national helth crisis. Since the crisi started tha unlicensed medic, Chrin, has been in custody and he has charges including murder. 

Marc Koska, the British inventor of one syringe that aonly can be use one time, argue that the medicine world should stop to use the tradittional syringes because they cause a lot of problemes, mostly in countries where people don't know all about the risk of medicine. 

In fact this effective syringe is used by the immunisation programmes, but they are less than 10% of the 16 billions injections given every year. So the challenge is to persuade the manufactures and governments to work with the latest syringe that as well as they cost the same that the normal ones.

I think that all of that is not a new problem in our world. There are a lot of countries that have to live similar medical crisis every year.  But we don't know about it because nobody informs us. We only know about our problems and the problems in the coutries near us, problemes from develope countries. 

One example has take place last year, I'm talking about Ebola. Ebola started in Africa, but we only knew about it when the virus infectes people from our countries and it came here. Then we lived some days that everybody talks about ebola, about create an injection, about the security measures... but when we managed to solve the trhee or four cases tha we had, suddenly we forget Ebola. An Ebola continues killing people in Africa. 

So I mean that this kind of news should't surprise us and instead of that we would try to remedy definitely.