Innovation Challenge NASA Selects Five Universities X-Hab 2013

 May 30, 2012 WASHINGTON, -- /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Five universities have been selected to participate in the 2013 Exploration Habitat (X-Hab) Academic Innovation Challenge led by NASA and the National Space Grant Foundation. These universities will design habitat systems, concepts and technologies that could be used in future deep space habitats

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The selection is the first milestone in a year-long process for these five teams. Throughout the 2012-2013 academic year, the teams will meet a series of milestones to design, manufacture, assemble and test their systems and concepts in cooperation with the NASA Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Program's Habitation Systems Project team.

"The X-Hab Academic Innovation Challenge is an exciting opportunity to engage university teams in the design process for NASA's next generation space systems," said Jason Crusan, NASA's AES Program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The agency benefits from the fresh and innovative perspective of these university teams, and they learn about deep space human exploration and the systems engineering approach from an experienced NASA team."

The challenge is  university-level participatory exploration effort designed to encourage studies in spaceflight-related disciplines. The challenge encourages multidisciplinary approaches, further outreach efforts and partnering with experts and industry. This design challenge requires undergraduate students to explore NASA's work on development of deep space habitats while also helping the agency gather new ideas to complement its current research and development. NASA selected these five teams from among a group of proposals received in May 2012.

The X-Hab Academic Innovation Challenge 2013 teams are:

- California State Polytechnic University: Vertical Habitability Layout and Fabrication Studies

- Oklahoma State University: Deep Space Habitat, Horizontal Habitability Layout Studies

- Texas A&M University: Wireless Smart Plug for DC Power

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The X-Hab Academic Innovation Challenge 2013 teams are:

- California State Polytechnic University: Vertical Habitability Layout and Fabrication Studies

- Oklahoma State University: Deep Space Habitat, Horizontal Habitability Layout Studies

- Texas A&M University: Wireless Smart Plug for DC Power

- University of Alabama in Huntsville: Design and Development of a Microgravity Random Access Stowage and Rack System

- University of Colorado at Boulder: Remote Plant Food Production Capability

The National Space Grant Foundation will fund design costs, development and delivery of the systems to the AES Habitat Systems team during the summer of 2013.

NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate's Advanced Exploration Systems Program, via the Habitat Systems Project team, is sponsoring the technology challenge. NASA is dedicated to supporting research that enables sustained and affordable human and robotic exploration. This educational challenge contributes to the agency's efforts to train and develop a highly skilled scientific, engineering and technical workforce for the future.

For information about competition registration and requirements, visit: http://www.spacegrant.org/xhab

For more information about the Advanced Exploration System Program Habitation Systems Project team, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/L37Ymq

SOURCE NASA

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Science Nugget: Solar Particles Infiltrating Earth Atmosphere Catching

NASA: Science nuggets are a collection of early science results, new research techniques, and instrument updates that further our attempt to understand the sun and the dynamic space weather system that surrounds Earth.

On May 17, 2012 an M-class flare exploded from the sun. The eruption also shot out a burst of solar particles traveling at nearly the speed of light that reached Earth about 20 minutes after the light from the flare. An M-class flare is considered a "moderate" flare, at least ten times less powerful than the largest X-class flares, but the particles sent out on May 17,2012 were so fast and energetic that when they collided with atoms in Earth's atmosphere, they caused a shower of particles to cascade down toward Earth's surface. The shower created what's are called a ground level enhancemen.

Ground level enhancemen are quite rare – fewer than 100 events have been observed in the last 70 years, since instruments were first able to detect them. Moreover, this was the first GLE of the current solar cycle--a sure sign that the sun's regular 11-year cycle is ramping up toward solar maximum system.

This ground level enhancemen has scientists excited for another reason, too. The joint Russian/Italian mission PAMELA, short for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, simultaneously measured the particles from the sun that caused the GLE. Solar particles have been measured before, but PAMELA is sensitive to the very high-energy particles that reach ground level at Earth. The data may help scientists understand the details of what causes this space weather phenomenon, and help them tease out why a relatively small flare was capable of producing the high-speed particles needed to cause a GLE.

Usually we would expected this kind of ground level enhancement from a giant coronal mass ejection or a big X-class flare, says Georgia de Nolfo, a space scientist who studies high speed solar particles at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. So not only are we really excited that we were able to observe these particularly high energy particles from space, but we also have a scientific puzzle to solve.

This path are observation began on Saturday, May 5, when a large sunspot rotated into view on the left side of the sun. The sunspot was as big as about 15 Earths, a fairly sizable active region, though by no means as big as some of the largest sunspots that have been observed on the sun. Dubbed Active Region 1476, the sunspots had already shown activity on the back side of the sun—as seen by a NASA mission called the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) -- so scientists were on alert for more. Scientists who study high-energy particles from the sun had been keeping their eye out for just such an active region because they had seen no ground level enhancement since December of 2006.

In addition, they had high hopes that the PAMELA mission, which had focused on cosmic rays from outside our galaxy could now be used to observe solar particles. Such "solar cosmic rays" are the most energetic particles that can be accelerated at or near the sun.


But there was a hitch the satellite carrying the PAMELA instruments were not currently usable since they were in calibration mode. Scientists including de Nolfo and another Goddard researcher, Eric Christian, let the PAMELA collaboration know that this might be the chance they had been waiting for and they convinced the Russian team in charge of the mission to turn the instruments back on to science mode.

And then the active region pretty much did nothing for two weeks, says Christian. But just before it disappeared over the right side of the sun, it finally erupted with an M-class flare.

Bingo Neutron monitors all over the world detected the shower of neutrons that represent a ground level enhancemen. Most of the time the showers are not the solar system energetic particles themselves, but the resultant debris of super-fast particles slamming into atoms in Earth’s atmosphere. The elevated levels of neutrons lasted for an hour.

Simultaneously, PAMELA recorded the incoming solar particles up in space, providing one of the first in-situ measurements of the stream of particles that initiated a GLE. Only the early data has been seen so far, but scientists have high hopes that as more observations are relayed down to Earth, they will be able to learn more about the May 17 ,2012 onslaught of solar protons, and figure out why this event triggered a GLE when earlier bursts of solar protons in January and March, 2012 didn't.

PAMELA is a space-borne experiment of the Wizard collaboration, which is an international collaboration between Italian (I.N.F.N) – Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Russian, German and Swedish institutes, realized with the main support of the Italian (ASI) and Russian Space Agencies.


Visit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Former Liberian president Charles G. Taylor sentenced to 50 years in war crimes case

Charles Taylor, 64, listens to a judge deliver his sentence Wednesday. The 50-year term was one of the longest by an international court. / Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

 

LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands - Charles G. Taylor, the former president of Liberia and a once-powerful warlord, was sentenced Wednesday to 50 years in prison for his role in atrocities committed in Sierra Leone during its civil war in the 1990s.

In a watershed case for modern human rights law, Taylor is the first former head of state convicted by an international tribunal since the Nuremberg trials in Germany after World War II.

Taylor was found guilty of “aiding and abetting, as well as planning, some of the most heinous and brutal crimes recorded in human history,’’ said Richard Lussick, the judge who presided over the sentencing here in an international criminal court near The Hague.

He said the lengthy prison term underscored Taylor’s position as a government’s leader during the time the crimes were committed.

“Leadership must be carried out by example, by the prosecution of crimes, not the commission of crimes,’’ the judge said in a statement read before the court.

If carried out, the sentence is likely to mean that Taylor, 64, will spend the rest of his life in prison. He looked at the floor after he was asked to stand as the sentence was read.

His legal team said it would file an appeal.

“The sentence is clearly excessive, clearly disproportionate to his circumstances, his age and his health, and does not take into account the fact that he stepped down from office voluntarily,’’ said Morris Anya, one of Taylor’s lawyers.

The prosecution, which had sought an even longer sentence of 80 years, said it was considering its own appeal, to raise the level of responsibility attributed to Taylor for crimes committed under his leadership.

Two rebel commanders tried earlier were handed similar prison sentences of 50 and 52 years respectively, and a prosecutor said that Taylor’s overall responsibility was considerably greater. The court must set a precise prison term; it is not allowed to impose a life sentence or the death penalty.

The chief prosecutor, Brenda Hollis, said that Taylor did not freely leave office but was pushed by a rebel offensive and by a delegation of African leaders urging him to prevent further bloodshed.

“The sentence today does not replace amputated limbs; it does not bring back those who were murdered,’’ Hollis said. “It does not heal the wounds of those who were raped or forced to become sexual slaves.’’

Outside the courthouse, Salamba Silla, who works with victims’ groups in Sierra Leone, pleaded for more help for former child soldiers, orphans, people whose limbs were hacked off and other victims of the country’s war.

“You can see hundreds of them begging on the streets of Freetown,’’ the capital, she said. “Many who suffered horrendously need help to return to the provinces, they think they cannot survive there.’’

Ibrahim Sorie, a lawmaker from Sierra Leone who had been seated in the court’s public gallery, said the sentence was fair. “It restores our faith in the rule of law, and we see that impunity is ending for top people,’’ Sorie said.

By previous agreement, Taylor will serve his sentence in a British prison, but since the appeals process is expected to last at least a year, he will remain in the relative comfort of the United Nations’ detention center at The Hague.

After more than a year of deliberations, the Special Court for Sierra Leone found Taylor guilty in late April of crimes against humanity and war crimes for his part in fomenting mass brutality that included murder, rape, the use of child soldiers, the mutilation of thousands of civilians and the mining of diamonds to pay for guns and ammunition.

Prosecutors have said that Taylor was motivated in these gruesome actions not by any ideology but rather by “pure avarice’’ and a thirst for power.

The UN-backed tribunal began its work in Sierra Leone, where it tried its other cases, but out of concern that hearings in West Africa would cause unrest among those who still support Taylor, his trial was moved to this town in the Netherlands.

In Liberia, where Taylor began a civil war and amassed a record of human rights atrocities during his dictatorial rule, there has not been the political will or the resources to set up a tribunal.

The mandate of the Special Court for Sierra Leone covers only crimes in that country between 1996 and 2002, and because the tribunal is to be shut down, critics say that a number of people close to Taylor have escaped prosecution.

Eight other leading members of different forces and rebel groups have already been sentenced by the tribunal. Taylor is the special court’s last defendant. His trial began in 2006, and since then, 115 witnesses have given testimony.

"What lesson does that send to President Assad?" Griffiths said. "Maybe the lesson is: If you are a sitting leader and the international community wants to get rid of you, either you get murdered like Col. (Moammar) Gadhafi (of Libya), or you hang on until the bitter end."

Olympic Games ticketing timeline Confirms London 2012

 The London 2012 Olympic Games Organising Committee has confirmed details for the sale of 900,000 contingency tickets for the Olympic Games, going on sale from 11:00am on 11 May 2012.
The Olympic Games take place from 27 July – 12 August this summer.

Reflecting the promise made by LOCOG Chair Sebastian Coe and CEO Paul Deighton last year, tickets will be sold on a first come, first served basis exclusively to approximately one million people who applied in previous rounds of Olympic games ticket sales and were not successful in securing a ticket.  

Exclusive pre-sale period:
First priority will be given to the 20,000 people who were unsuccessful in the initial Olympic ballot application and then again unsuccessful when they applied in the second chance sales. They would have received a notification on 26 June 2011 that their second chance sales application was unsuccessful.


From 11am on 11 May to 6pm on 12 May, an exclusive pre-sale for these individuals will see tickets available for all events, including limited tickets for Opening and Closing Ceremonies.

Five-day sales period:
The one million people who applied in the initial ballot but were unsuccessful will then have an exclusive five-day sales period.

13 May 2012 – Volleyball, Football, Hockey, Tennis and Wrestling.

14 May 2012 – Athletics (Race Walk and Marathon), Canoe Slalom, Canoe Sprint, Shooting, Swimming, Track Cycling, Volleyball and Weightlifting

15 May 2012 – Diving, Equestrian, Handball, Swimming (Marathon), Synchronised Swimming, Table Tennis and Water Polo

16 May 2012 – Badminton, Basketball (North Greenwich Arena sessions), Boxing, Fencing, Gymnastics, Judo, Sailing and Taekwondo

17 May 2012 – Archery, Basketball (Basketball Arena sessions), BMX, Modern Pentathlon, Mountain Bike, Road Cycling, Rowing, Triathlon and Olympic games Park tickets.

All tickets visit the London 2012 will be available froms 11:00am on the London 2012 ticketing website

Customers will be limited to applying for one session and a maximum of four tickets, with those eligible for the sales set to be contacted directly via email by LOCOG on 8 May.

By purchasing tickets on any of these days, customers will not be eligible to purchase any more tickets in this sales period. Unsold tickets on each day will be carried forward to the next day’s sales, with any tickets unsold during this period going back on general sale from 23 May at 11am. 

Olympic Park tickets:
LOCOG has also confirmed that Olympic Park tickets will be available as part of this sale, allowing ticketholders to experience the atmosphere of the Park and watch sport on the big screens primarily in the first week before the Athletics starts. Approximately 70,000 of these tickets are available in this sale, with full price tickets at £10 and tickets for people aged 16 or under and seniors aged 60 or over at £5. LOCOG Chair Seb Coe said: 'We know thousands of sports fans were disappointed when they missed out in the initial sales period because of the massive demand for tickets. We promised we would prioritise these fans when we released the contingency tickets, which is exactly what we are doing.'

New tickets to help more people get to the Games will be available on 29 May. These tickets include Cycling Road Race at Box Hill, in Surrey; Cycling Individual Time Trial at Hampton Court Palace; and tickets for Wimbledon, which will provide access to The Hill and the big screen only.

Paralympic Games tickets:
It has also been announced that remaining tickets for the Paralympic Games will go on sale from 11am on 21 May 2012 – exactly 100 days before the Paralympic Opening Ceremony.

In further news, LOCOG has confirmed its ‘babes in arms’ policy. Children aged 12 months or under will be permitted access to all London 2012 venues without a ticket other than Wembley Stadium, St James’ Park, Old Trafford and North Greenwich Arena.    

Visit the London 2012 ticketing website 

5th time Vishwanathan Anand wins world chess for championship

5th time Indian Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand beat his Israeli challenger Boris Gelfand in a tense rapid chess tiebreaker  win his fifth World Championship title and fourth in a row in Moscow on Wednesday.

Anand overcame a stiff challenge from Gelfand by 1 point in the tiebreaker to seal the coveted title. They had drawn level  6 points each after the regulation 12-round series were locked in an intense battle in  tiebreaker.

However, it was who Anand  held  nerves in  four-round tiebreaker. After the first round ended in a draw, Anand sealed the crucial advantage by wining the second round to take the all important lead of 1 point.

They then played out two more draws before Gelfand conceded  challenge handing Anand another world crown with the final 2.5-15score being .

It was a moment of joy for Anand and his family, but the champion himself seemed modest of his latest achievement.

"It was incredibly tensed. When I woke up this morning, I knew it would end one way or the other but I did not know how it will go. It was so even that I did not know how the tiebreaker will turn," a relieved Anand said after retaining the title.


 

Shyamnagar upazila under Satkhira district Life still goes on in Aila-hit 'Bangladesh'

 SATKHIRA:Very sad Life still remains a misery for the people in two upazilas of Satkhira district as it used to be three years ago, when the cyclone Aila left a trail of devastation.

About 30 percent of the Aila victims are still living on upland and embankments without any job, pure drinking water and safe sanitation facilities.

They cannot return home, as they are yet to receive a grant from the government announced in 2010 in a bid to help them rebuild their houses.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited Shyamnagar on July 23 in 2010 and committed to allocate Tk 20 thousand per family in the form of grant for house building.

But the affected people said they had not yet received a single penny of the money due to some legal complexities, though the money is lying idle with two banks in Satkhira.

However, Shyamnagar Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO) Md Doulotuzzaman Khan told daily sun that the legal complexity had been removed and that the victims would get the money soon.

On May 25 in 2009 the cyclone battered the coastal area in the south, including Satkhira.

The worst-affected unions are Gabura and Padmapukur under Shyamnagar upazila and Protapnagar under Assassuni upazila.

A total of 117 km embankments were damaged. Of them, 64 km were damaged fully. On the other hand, 73 people were killed in the natural disaster.

Besides, three lakh or 300 thousand people were rendered homeless in the district and shrimp on 32 thousand hectares of land and crops on 2 thousand hectares of land were washed away.

Hundreds of thousands of people took shelter on upland and embankments.

Government and non-government organisations stood beside the victims with humanitarian aid, including food, clothing, medical service and shelter for about two years.

The damaged embankments have also been reconstructed. But people of the affected areas have no work as agricultural and shrimp lands are totally affected. Crops cannot be grown on the agricultural land because of the high salinity of soil. So they are jobless.

Hundreds of them have already left the area and settled elsewhere.

SCARS OF AILA

# Salinity leaves cropland barren triggering a job crisis

# No supply of drinking water

# Victims yet to receive govt grant for house building

‘Laden doctor’of Washington cuts aid over jailing

WASHINGTON: A US Senate panel has cut $33m (£21m) in aid to Pakistan in response to the jailing of a Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama Bin Laden.

The Senate Appropriations Committee has said it will cut US aid by $1m for each year of Shakil Afridi’s sentence.

Dr Afridi was tried for treason under a tribal justice system for running a fake vaccination programme to gather information for US intelligence. Bin Laden was killed by US forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011.

The move from the Senate panel follows earlier cuts to the White House’s budget request for Pakistan. The cuts would be part of a bill that would send $1bn in aid to Pakistan in the next financial year.

“We need Pakistan, Pakistan needs us, but we don’t need Pakistan double-dealing and not seeing the justice in bringing Osama Bin Laden to an end,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, calling Pakistan “a schizophrenic ally”.

Meanwhile Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy said: “It’s Alice in Wonderland at best. If this is co-operation, I’d hate like hell to see opposition.”

Correspondents say the cuts reflect mounting frustration in Congress over Pakistan’s role in fighting terrorism on its soil.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday denounced as “unjust and unwarranted” the treatment of a Pakistani doctor who was jailed for 33 years for helping in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

A tribal court in Khyber, a lawless district and extremist hotbed, on Wednesday convicted Shakeel Afridi of treason after he agreed to collect DNA for US intelligence to verify the presence of the most-wanted al-Qaeda leader.

“We regret both the fact that he was convicted and the severity of his sentence,” Hillary told a joint press conference with New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully. — BBC Online/AFP