Phobos-Grunt mission: break way in the distant universe

Russia is back in the distant universe. An important step in this direction will be made later this year. It is the automatic launching interplanetary station Phobos-Grunt is transferring to the Martian soil to Earth satellites.
The launch should be made to the Baikonur Cosmodrome with Zenit carrier rocket in November. For 11 months the cosmic device needs to get to orbit the Red Planet. Few months on spacing will conduct exploration of Mars and look for a place to land on its satellite Phobos. Then the device for lowering the surface land at Phobos, to take soil samples to be transferred to Earth. With the help of these scientists hope to learn more about the processes that take place the solar system.
All equipment at the station will be completely new, it is crammed scientific devices, Russian, foreign and joint production. Among them is the Russian-French device to explore the layout of methane in the Martian atmospheric. INHO Chinese satellite, to be launched along with Phobos, will be separated from the interplanetary station orbiting the Red Planet and will deal with its magnetic field research. So the mission is very complex, underlines the deputy head Vitaly Davidov Roskosmos.

At one time we launch Phobos delay to ensure that the mission will be performed. The decision was correct. We were able to increase the reliability of this mission because we performed additional work. Now we do not have any reasons that would lead to changes planned for beginning preparations at the Baikonur devices. Made a special group, it follows all the works on Phobos-Grunt, head of Roskosmos each week listening to information on the status of the head group of works on the project. We calculate that the mission will be implemented fully and that the Chinese unit that will be thrown together with Phobos, to fulfill its mission. Work is an important and risky. If you add up all probability, breathtaking.
Continue mission Phobos-Grunt will be Mars-Net project, which will be implemented approximately 2017th year. In addition to the expedition to the red planet , possibly, make the nearest neighbor of the Earth - the Moon, says astronaut, Deputy Energy general RKK Engineers Vladimir Solovjov.
It should form a base in orbit. The missiles would switch her major blocks. Then assembly and testing. Further to the base Dolec crew and boat tests made in orbit. Next the crew fly to the moon, the asteroid. Even before the flight to distant planets or the moon, to do some automatic satellite links around the Moon, by which one can make navigation and delivery of information.

Last, another Soviet mission to Mars exploration launched in 1987. year - Vega project, though it was not completed due to loss of connection to the cosmic machine. And now, after almost 25 years, the new, the Russian mission to place on the progress of Russia in the distant universe. The Phobos-Grunt project professionals wishing to practice the basic technology for later expeditions to the Red Planet.

You think, while others see it on screen - mind reading machine!

Scientists have created an amazing process through which they can see other people's mental images. This discovery will in the future to observe people's thoughts as they arise and develop.

Scientists at the University of California managed to decode the brain activity by measuring blood flow through the visual cortex, and then use that information to construct images of what people see. Technology can now detect only parts of movies that were released to users of this equipment before using the scanner.

However, researchers are convinced that they are on good track to soon discover the way that the display can show the mental images that no one ever saw except the one from whose head "out".

The purpose of this discovery should be the realization of communication with people who have survived a stroke and fell into a coma. However, it is still many hot years, some say decades before such a machine is able to read minds or intentions of persons.

Achievement to which has so far been achieved by the computer programmed to recognize certain visual of information and their relationship to the blood stream in the visual cortex.

Participants in the experiment were watching film trailers, and the computer is "taught" what happens in the brain while people watching the film. After that is inserted in computer database of 18 million seconds of random video YutTub. This material is used to make computer I tried to arrange the picture from the information being received from the brain experimental people.

To ensure that researchers computer not "recognize" that the trailers have been developed, experimented watched trailers that had not been shown. At the end of the experiment the computer was able to create a blurred but recognizable version of what actually took place on the screen.

Table Collider

Russian scientists have made a working model of table Collider, the truth, not andronog, but the laser. In the future, this compact power supplies to dispersed particles infected with greater acceleration than the Great Androni at CERN. A perspective of its practical application, "the older brother of the Swiss" can surely envy.
The idea was born of table Collider at the Institute of Physics, "Lebedev" Russian Academy of Sciences (FIAN). For its implementation, together with the experimentalists MDU was established in laboratories, where he built a miniature model of accelerators. It is a compact laser that generates very short but very strong pulse of energy. Levels electromagnetic fields, which occur while they can not be achieved even when an explosion of new super star in the Universe.
The main advantage is its compact accelerators told "Voice of Russia" doctor of physical-mathematical sciences professor Andrei Saveljev-Trofimov.
It turns out that in the plasma with a laser can create an acceleration field three, four, five times beyond the field, which can be achieved at the Great Andron Collider. This means a radical reduction in size. These are no longer kilometers, the acceleration of electrons takes place at one centimeter or less. A laser system that can provide a relatively small and occupies an area 20-30 square meters.

Table Collider in contrast to his "older brother of the Swiss" that can be widely applied in various fields, continues Saveljev-Trofimov.
Accelerators of this type can be used in the Great Andron for initial acceleration of particles. Applied tasks are primarily associated with the treatment of various cancers by using proton beams. It is realistic to increase the speed of laser proton beams to energies of hundreds of mega-electron, and that kind of energy is required for cancer therapy.
In addition, it is possible to use proton beams in nuclear research process - the creation and sharing core isotopes. Another field is astrophysics, among others, in modeling astrophysical processes: an explosion of new super star or a meteorite hitting the planet.
According to scientists, he and his colleagues access the research impact of cosmic radiation on spacecraft electronics, which depends on the ability to work spaceship.
Foreign experts believe that the invention of table Collider in Russia laid the foundation for a new direction in physics research. Scientists, in the words of Andrew Saveljeva-Trofimova, planned establishment of a new center of high energy physics, which will be a key element of a very powerful compact laser. The plan is to build on during the year in the territory of the Institute of Physics, "Lebedev" RAN.

Facebook "Subscribe" option

Popular social site Facebook unveiled a new feature which will help the seven and a half year old site to remain competitive since the new site set these standards.

Facebook new features carry a simple name "Subscribe Button" and allows users to receive only Ipad that users have previously reported, such as the popular services for micro-blogs, Twitter

With this new model, users can perform and to adjust to who will be inform on Ipad about their status. They can choose from three options offered to the public, just friends, or specially designated list of recipients.

Fluent glass will ensure fire safety

Scientists from the Siberian city of Tomsk suggest that fires off glass. Together with the MVS has already been carried out tests of this new effective means to fight the fire.
Product innovation based on liquid glass is ready for practical implementation, says Institute Professor of Physics of high technology Tomskog Polytechnic University Vasily Lots.
New extinguishing the aqueous solution of liquid glass - in other words - stationery glue, or as she's known, silicate glue. When the solution to be put into the focus of the first fire evaporates water, there is a certain fall of temperature in this zone. Then the liquid glass, losing water, turn the foil covering the surface of a burning building and in case of further warming it starts to the penny. As a result it creates a layer of lightweight inorganic foam, which does not burn. When extinguishing high temperature compared with water requires much less new funds for fire fighting.
The first field tests have confirmed the efficacy of new agents. During training two brigades were extinguished by four buildings affected by fire: a wooden house, car tires, trays with flammable liquid and branches of fir. The first team used a solution based on liquid glass, the other is traditionally extinguished the fire - with water and foam. Experimentalists have come to terms with all the tasks minute faster. In the case of large areas during fire fighting to multiply decreased. Silicate glass can be eliminated fires with levels of complexity, with the new composition of environmentally neutral and not to harm nature, says Professor Lots.

Fluent glass is added to the different washing powder - it does not harm the man. It is an ecologically clean material. When extinguishing the trees will be cast solution - that nothing bothers me. Obtained easy inorganic foam can be removed if re-dissolved in water, where it gets glue. Or it can be used in the construction industry as a material for thermal insulation.

New product tomskih experts also can be used for fire prevention treatment facilities - for example, walls of wooden buildings, which are located in the vicinity of the source. In addition, the solution will assist in extinguishing fires in oil and gas wells. Mixture will also be able to fill in a small fire extinguishers, which can fit in a backpack.

Deciphered all the chromosomes of the human genome

Researchers of the Institute for Molecular Genetics, Max Planck of Berlin decode the two groups of chromosomes in the human genome for the first time. Discovery could provide valuable information about the treatment of disease.


Mapping of human genes has progressed considerably since the publication of the first map of human genome a decade ago, but Margaret Hoe and her fellow researchers at the Institute for Molecular Genetics, Max Planck scales are broken genome at the molecular level, and so far no one has accomplished.

Until now, the human genome has been treated as one unit, which explains Hoe, a fundamental error.

"The first gene we read the beginning of our decade, and it was actually a product that took us out on the wrong side," she explains in an interview with Deutsche Welle. "Every person has two genomes that contain two genetic code-one that belongs to his mother and others who belong to the Father."

These two genomes were different and only by gaining information on both "haplotypes", ie variations of gene sequences on individual chromosomes, The entire genome can be analyzed.

The team's findings were published in the September issue of the journal Genome Research.

See double

Current techniques to map the genome were not able to read the genome separately. Only by combining different technologies into a new method, Hoe and her colleagues were able to achieve for the first time.

"With this breakthrough, we can see much closer to the gene," said Hoe. "By decoding the two groups of chromosomes from the way human genome separately, we have reached the level of individual molecules for therapy and individual therapy. Now we can determine the exact genetic map of a person, and that we can take away the healing. "

Hoe and colleagues studied the genome of 51-year-old Germans. However, she points out that discovery is linked to the nation.

"Our study covers the genetic profile of Europeans whites, which includes a multitude of nations besides the Germans, such as primers for the French, even the inhabitants of North America with European roots," said Hoe.

Promising progress

Discovery of praise and other researchers. "Genetic mapping of the past few years, evolving quickly, published a large number of genomes, American, Korean, European ...," says Simon Majers, a lecturer in bioinformatics at the University of Oxford, who was a member of the research.

"All previous genetic mapping seized a small part of DNA, but of which parent they come it was not clear. Now we can collect two copies of the DNA into two units, and better take a look at changes in the genes. "

New therapies in the treatment of hepatitis C

According to the World Health Organization, Hepatitis C in the world was suffering more than 170 million people. Most of southern Europe, Africa and Asia. The virus causes inflammation of the liver. If it becomes chronic, leading to cirrhosis.


The virus is spread through infected blood, there is no vaccine. Standard treatment is carried out with interferon. The U.S. has now approved a new medicine, which significantly enhances the effect of treatment in half the time.

"Telaprevir" is a new medicine to the treatment of hepatitis C infection brings decisive advantages. Patients are now receiving interferon with ribavirin, interferon booster. The new medicine can not replace the combined therapy, but if she adds, significantly improves. It showed several comparative studies in which he participated and professor Hajner Vedemejer with high medical school in Hanover:

"In patients who had never been treated with, the result was such that the standard therapy healed them, 50 percent, while in therapy with the addition of a new cure, healed was 75 per cent. This is 30 percent or more in four of five patients, is a big improvement. in another analysis, the recovery was even 80 percent of cases. "

The standard treatment is complicated

Hepatitis viruses hepatitis CVirus many as the current, standard treatment is complicated: injections of interferon, which strengthens the immune system, must be received one week. Then the day after taking two tablets of interferon enhancers. The standard combination therapy lasts 48 weeks - almost a year. When additionally taking telaprevir, the therapy is reduced to 24 weeks. Even 30 percent of patients who have benefited from standard therapy, benefited from the new strategy. However, taking the cure may have contraindications.

"The main side effect of telaprevir are skin reactions. Redness of the skin, which can infect more than 50 percent of body surface area. Stvorati can be blisters, often occurs, and diarrhea. That was at about 10 percent of patients. In this case, treatment should be discontinued ".

"Telaprevir" and similar drugs are called protease inhibitors that block viral reproduction. These drugs can lead to numerous interactions with other medications, for example with anti-rheumatic drugs. "It takes experience. Treatment is complicated, not only because of side effects. When the interferon-ribavirin therapy is not being implemented properly, if the medicines are not taken regularly, easily comes to resistance, and this is very dangerous for the patient."

Taking the so-called "protease inhibitor" is strictly regulated: every eight hours - even at night - must take one capsule. The procedure requires the patient's strict discipline. In addition, medicine is not cheap - it costs around 17,000 euros for the six months of treatment.

Apparently it had found a new, good medicine against hepatitis C. However, if treatment costs remain high, then it certainly will not be able to heal all the ill.