Multinational company Boeing brings SENSE NanoSats to Air Force

Boeing, an American aerospace and defense corporation, has given two Space Environmental NanoSat Experiment (SENSE) satellites to the U.S Air Force

These nanosats are 30 x 10 x 10 centimeters in size, and weigh less than nine pounds each. They are scheduled to be sent into orbit in the summer of 2013 on the ORS-3 mission, built to collect and transmit weather data. Each of the nanosat contains a GPS receiver and sensor so that it can gather vdata to help support assessments and weather prediction. These nanosats also have a miniature S-band transceiver to downlink mission and spacecraft data at one megabit per second.

Boeing Phantom Works Advanced Space & Intelligence Systems Director Bruce Chesley said in a statement, "The SENSE nanosats offer customers an affordable, operationally robust option to conduct military missions using spacecraft no larger than a standard loaf of bread.”

What's inside Mariner 2?

Mariner 2 (“Mariner-Venus 1962”), an American space probe to Venus, the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days, was the first robotic space probe, a scientific space exploration mission in which a spacecraft leaves Earth and explores space, to conduct a successful planetary encounter.

The first successful spacecraft/spaceship, a vehicle, vessel or machine designed to fly in outer space, in the Mariner program, which launched a series of robotic interplanetary probes designed to investigate Mars, Venus and Mercury from 1962 to 1973, a program conducted by the American space agency NASA (“National Aeronautics and Space Administration”) who is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research, in conjunction with Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it was a simplified version of the Block I spacecraft of the Ranger program, a series of unmanned space mission by the United States in the 1960s whose objectives was to obtain the first close-up images of the surface of the Moon; and an exact copy of Mariner 1, the first spacecraft of the American Mariner program. The missions of Mariner 1 and 2 spacecraft are together sometimes known as the Mariner R missions. Mariner 2 passed within 35,000 kilometers (22,000 mi) of
Venus on December 14, 1962.

The Mariner probe consisted of a 100 cm (39.4 in) diameter hexagonal bus, to which solar panels (also “solar modules,” “photovoltaic module,” or “photovoltaic panel”), a packaged, connected assembly of photovoltaic cells, instrument booms, and antennas (“aerial”), an electrical device which converts electric power into radio waves, and vice versa, were attached The scientific instruments on board the Mariner spacecraft were: two radiometers (one of each for the microwave--radio waves with wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz (0.3 GHz) and 300 GHz--and infrared light (“IR”) portions--electromagnetic radiation with longer wavelengths than those of visible light extending from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 0.74 micrometres to 300 micrometers--of the electromagnetic spectrum, the range of all possible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation), devices for measuring the radiant flux (power) of electromagnetic radiation; a micrometeorite (a tiny meteor: a small particle of rock in  space, usually weighing less than a gram) sensor; a solar plasma (in physics and chemistry, is a state of matter similar to gas in which a certain portion of the particles is ionized) sensor; a charged particle sensor; and a magnetometer, a measuring instrument used to measure the strength and perhaps the direction of magnetic fields.

These instruments were designed to measure the temperature distribution on the surface of Venus, as well as making basic measurements of Venus’ atmosphere, a layer of gases that surrounds Venus and that is held in place by the gravity of the planet. Due to the planet’s thick, featureless cloud cover, no camera, or a device that records images that can be stored directly, transmitted to another location, or both, were included in the Mariner unit. Mariner 10, an American robotic space probe launched by NASA on November 3, 1973, to fly by the planets Mercury and Venus, later discovered that extensive cloud detail was visible in ultraviolet (UV) light, electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays, that is, in the range 10 nm to 400 nm, corresponding to photon energies from 3 ev to 12 eV.

See: SpaceX CRS-1's Mission Plan: Flight Day 1 and 2 (October 8-9) 

Science, engineering and technology

The distinction between science, engineering and technology is not always clear. Science, a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe, is the reasoned investigation, or having the capacity for consciously making sense of things for establishing and verifying facts, and changing or justifying practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information; or the study of phenomena, aimed at discovering enduring principles among elements of the phenomenal world, or those observable occurrence, by employing formal (utterances, conceptually similar to a ritual although typically secular and less involved) techniques such as the scientific method, a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge.

Technologies, on the other hand, are not usually exclusively products of science, because they have to satisfy requirements such as: utility, which in economics, is a representation of preferences over some set of goods and services; usability, the ease of use and learnability of  a human-made object; and safety, the state of being “safe,” the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, financial, political, occupational, psychological, educational or other types or consequences of failure, damage, error, accidents, harm or any other event which could be considered non-desirable.

Lastly, engineering is the goal-oriented (GO) process of designing and making tools and systems to exploit natural phenomena for practical human means, often (but not always) using results and techniques from science; describing variability in dispositional or situational goal preferences that no individual implicitly sets for him/herself in achievement situations. The development of technology may draw upon many fields of knowledge, including scientific, engineering, mathematical (the abstract study of topics encompassing quantity, structure, space, change, and other properties; it had no generally accepted definition), linguistic (“language” is the human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, and “a language” is any specific example of such system), and historical knowledge (an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about these events), to achieve some practical result.

Technology is often a consequence of science and engineering--although technology as a human activity precedes the two fields. For example, science might study the flow of electrons, subatomic particles with a negative elementary electric charge, in electrical conductors, a material which contains moving electric charges in physics, by using already-existing tools and knowledge. This new-found knowledge may then be used by engineers to create new tools and machines, such as semiconductors, electrical conductivity intermediate to that of a conductor and an insulator; computers, a general purpose device that can be programmed to carry out a finite set of arithmetic or logical operations; and other forms of advanced technology. In this sense, scientists and engineers may both be considered technologists; the three fields are often considered as one for the purposes of research and references.

The exact relations between science and technology, a term of art used to encompass the relationship between science and technology, in particular have been debated scientists, historians and policymakers in the late 20th century, in part because the debate can inform the funding of basic and applied science. In the immediate wake of World War II (“Second World War,” “WWII,” “WW2”), a global war that was underway by 1939 and ended in 1945, for example, in the United States it was widely considered that technology was simply “applied science” and that to fund basic science was to reap technological results in due time. An articulation of this philosophy could be found explicitly in “Science--The Endless Frontier,” a treatise on postwar science policy by Vannevar Bush, an American engineer, inventor and science administrator known for his work in analog computers, for his role an initiator and administrator of the Manhattan Project, for founding Raytheon, and for the memex, an adjustable microfilm viewer with a structure analogous to that of the World Wide Web: “New products, new industries, and more jobs require continuous additions to knowledge of the laws of nature... This essential new knowledge can be obtained only through basic scientific research.” In the late-1960s, however, this view came under attack, leading towards initiatives to fund science for specific tasks (initiatives resisted by the scientific community). The issue remains contentious--though most analysis resist the model that technology simply is a result of scientific research.

See: Fathers of the Modern Medical Science

History of materials science

The history of materials science, an interdisciplinary field applying the properties of matter to various areas of science and engineering, is the study of how different materials were used as influenced by: the history of Earth, encompassing the development of the planet Earth from its formation to the present day; and the culture (a modern concept based on a term first used in classical antiquity by the Roman orator, Cicero: “cultura animi”) of the peoples, or nation who share a common language, ethnicity, descent, or history, of the Earth.

The material of choice of a given era is often a defining point. The following phrases such as the following are good examples: Stone Age, a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make implements with a sharp-edge, a point, or a percussion surface; Bronze Age, a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons; and the Steel Age, which is actually the Industrial Revolution, a period from 1750 to 1850 where changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times.

Originally deriving from the manufacture of ceramics, an inorganic, nonmetallic solid prepared by the action of heat and subsequent cooling, and its putative derivative metallurgy, materials science is one of the oldest forms of engineering and applied science. Modern materials science evolved directly from metallurgy, a domain of materials science that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their intermetallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are called alloys, which itself evolved from mining and (likely) ceramics and the use of fire.

A major breakthrough in the understanding of materials occurred in the late 19th century, when the American scientist Josiah Willard Gibbs, an American scientist who made important theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, and mathematics, demonstrated that the thermodynamic properties (the branch of natural science concerned with heat and its relation to other forms of energy and work) related to atomic structure, the basic unit of matter that consists of a dense central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons, in various phases, which in the physical sciences, is a region of space (a thermodynamic system), throughout which all physical properties of a material are essentially uniform, are related to the physical properties of a material.

Important elements of modern materials science are a product of the space race, a mid-to-late 20th century competition between the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (USA) for supremacy in space exploration: The understanding and engineering, or the science, skill, and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and also build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes, of the metallic alloys, a mixture or metallic solid solution composed of two or more elements, and silica (“silicon dioxide”), an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula SiO2, and carbon (the chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6) materials; used in the construction of space vehicles enabling the exploration of space.

Materials science has driven, and been driven by, the development of revolutionary technologies such as: plastics, any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids that are moldable; semiconductors, which has electrical conductivity intermediate to that of a conductor and an insulator; and biomaterials, or any matter, surface, or construct that interacts with biological systems.          

Before the 1960s (and in some cases decades after), many “materials science” departments were named “metallurgy” departments, from a 19th and early 20th century emphasis on metals. The field has since broadened to include every class of materials, including: ceramics (ceramic engineering, the science and technology of creating objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials); polymers, chemical compound or mixture of compounds consisting of repeating structural units created through a process of polymerization; semiconductors; magnetic materials (magnetism is a property of materials that respond to an applied magnetic field); medical implant materials, a medical device manufactured to replace a missing biological structure, support a damaged biological structure, or enhance an existing biological structure; and biological materials (materiomics, the holistic study of material systems).

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Brandon Lee: The first digital electronic computer: The notable...

Brandon Lee: The first digital electronic computer: The notable...: A succession of steadily more powerful and flexible computing devices, broadly, a term describing any goal-oriented activity requiring, b...

Looking for signs of disease through check-ups

The physical/medical/clinical examination (more popularly known as a “check-up” or “medical”) is the process by which a doctor investigates the body of a patient for signs of disease: ‘symptoms’ are what the patient volunteers, while ‘signs’ are what the healthcare provider detects by examination.

The healthcare provider uses the senses of sight, hearing, touch, and sometimes smell; e.g., in infection, uremia/uraemia (a term used to loosely describe the illness accompanying kidney failure (also called renal failure), in particular the nitrogenous waste products associated with the failure of this organ), diabetic ketoacidosis (a potentially life-threatening complication in patients with diabetes mellitus). Taste has been made redundant by the availability of modern lab tests.

Four actions are taught as the basis of physical examination: inspection, which in medicine, is the through and unhurried visualization of the client; palpation (feel), used as part of a physical examination in which an object is felt (usually with hands of a healthcare practitioner) to determine its size, shape, firmness, or location; percussion (tap to determine resonance characteristics), a method to determine the underlying structure, and is used in clinical examinations to assess the condition of the thorax or abdomen; and auscultation (listen), or the term for listening to the internal sounds of the body, usually using a stethoscope. This order may be modified depending on the main focus of the examination (e.g., a joint may be examined by simply “look, feel, move.” Having this set order is an educational tool that encourages practitioners to be systematic in their approach and refrain from using tools such as the stethoscope--an acoustic medical device for auscultation, or listening to the internal sounds of an animal or human body--before they have fully evaluated the other modalities).

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An Overview of the Buran Spacecraft

The Buran orbital vehicle program was developed in response to the US Space Shuttle program, which in 1980s raised considerable concerns among Soviet military and especially Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov, Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union from 1976 until his death.

An authoritative biographer of the Russian space program, academic Boris Chertok, a prominent Soviet and Russian rocket designer, responsible for control systems of a number of ballistic missiles and spacecraft, recounts how the program came into being. According to Chertok, after the US developed its Space Shuttle program, by NASA, officially called “Space Transportation System” (“STS”), the United States government's manned launch vehicle from 1981 to 2011, the Soviet military became suspicious that it could be used for military purposes, due to its enormous payload, several times that of previous US spaceships. The Soviet government asked the TsNIIMash (ЦНИИМАШ, Central Institute of Machine-building, a major player in defense analysis), an initialism for the Central Research Institute of Machine Building, which is the institute of the Russian aeronautics and space agency and specialized in the development of long range ballistic missiles, air defense, and propulsion units for defense sectors, for an expert opinion. Institute director, Yuri Mozzohorin, recalls that for as long time the institute could not envisage a civilian payload large enough to require a vehicle of that capacity. Based on this, as well as on US profitability analyses of that time, which showed that the Space Shuttle would be economically efficient only a large number of launches (one every week or so), Mozzohorin concluded that the vehicle had a military purpose, although he was unable to say exactly what. The Soviet program was further boosted after Defense Minister Ustinov received a report from analysts showing that, at least in theory, the Space Shuttle could be used to deploy nuclear bombs over Soviet territory. Chertok recounts that Ustinov was so worried by the possibility that he made the Soviet response program a top priority.

Officially, the Buran spacecraft was designed for the delivery to orbit and return to Earth of spacecraft, cosmonauts, and supplies. Both Chertok and Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy suggest that from the beginning, the program was military in nature; however, the exact military capabilities, or intended capabilities, of the Buran program remain classified. Commenting on the discontinuation of the program in his interview to “New Scientist,” a weekly non-peer-reviewed English-language international science magazine, which since 1996 has also run a website, covering recent developments in science and technology for a general audience, Russian cosmonaut/astronaut, or a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft, Olet Kotov, born October 27, 1965, in Simferopol, Crimean oblast in Ukrainian SSR, confirms their accounts:

“We had no civilian tasks for Buran and the military ones were no longer needed. It was originally designed as a military system for weapon delivery, maybe even nuclear weapons. The American shuttle also has military uses.”
Like its American counterpart, The “Buran,” when in transit from its landing sites back to the launch complex, was transported on the back of a large jet aeroplane--the Antonov An-225 “Mriya transport aircraft, a strategic airlift cargo aircraft, designed by the Soviet Union’s Antonov Design Bureau in the 1980s, which was designed in part for this task and remains the largest aircraft in the world to fly multiple times.

See: History of Computing

The Buran spacecraft

The Buran spacecraft, GRAU index--the “Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, a department of the Russian (ex-Soviet) Ministry of Defense--”11F35 K1” was a Soviet orbital vehicle analogous in function and design to the US Space Shuttle, a partially reusable launch system and orbital spacecraft operated by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for human spaceflight missions. It is developed by Chief Designer Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy, a Russian and Ukrainian engineer, General Director and General Designer of the JSC NPO Molniya, Doctor Science, Hero of Socialist Labour, laureate of Lenin Prize (1962) and State Prizes (!950 1952), and also the lead developer of the Russian Spiral programme; of RSC Energia/RKK Energia, also known as  “OAO S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia,” a Russian manufacturer of spacecraft and space station components.  

Buran complete unmanned spaceflight in 1988 and remains the only Soviet space shuttle that was launched into space, as the Buran programme, a Soviet and later Russian reusable spacecraft project that began in 1974 at TsAGI, was formally cancelled in 1993. The shuttle Buran was destroyed in 2002 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, also called “Tyuratam,” the world’s first and largest operational space launch facility, when the hangar in which it was stored collapsed.

In addition to the shuttle “Buran,” four other space shuttles were being built in the Buran programme before its cancellation: OK-1K2 “Ptichka” (95-97% complete), an informal nickname for the second space shuttle to be produced as part of the Buran program; “Shuttle 2.01”/OK-2K1 “Baikal” (30-50% complete), the third space shuttle vehicle of the Soviet Buran program, serial number “11F35 K3”; Shuttle 2.02 (10-20% complete), the number of the fourth built Soviet Shuttle Buran reusable space vehicles; Shuttle 2.03 (dismantled), the designation of the fifth Soviet Shuttle Buran reusable space vehicle.

More than a dozen test models, mock-ups or scale models were built, of which the “analogue aero test model” OK-GLI, a test vehicle (“buran aerodynamic analogue”) in the Buran program, flew atmospheric and the 1/8 scale model BOR-5 flight vehicle, used to test the main aerodynamic characteristics, thermal and acoustic loads and stability for the Shuttle Buran program, made suborbital test flights.

See: What is military intelligence (MI)?

Mars Express + Rosetta = Venus Express

The Venus Express (VEX) mission was proposed in 2001 to reuse the design of the Mars Express mission, a space exploration mission being conducted by the European Space Agency (ESA).

Some mission characteristics, however, led to design--the creation of a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system (as in architectural blueprints, engineering drawing, business process, circuit diagrams and sewing patterns) changes: primarily in the areas if thermal control, communications and electrical power.

For example, since Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun and the second smallest planet in the Solar System, is approximately twice as far from the Sun, the star at the center of the Solar System, as Venus is, the radiant heating of the spacecraft will be four times greater for “Venus Express” than “Mars Express.” Also, the ionizing radiation, or radiation composed of particles that individually carry through energy to liberate an electron from an atom or molecule, ionizing it, environment will be harsher.

On the other hand, the more intense illumination of the solar panels (also known as “solar modules,” “photovoltaic module,” or “photovoltaic panel”), packaged connected assemblies of photovoltaic cells, will result in more generated photovoltaic--solar cell, an electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, power.

The “Venus Express” mission also uses some spare instruments for the “Rosetta” spacecraft, a robotic spacecraft of the European Space Agency on a mission to study the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The mission was proposed by a consortium led by D. Titov (Germany), E. Lellouch (France) and F. Taylor (United Kingdom).

See: MEO/LEO Satellites: Acceptable latencies but lower speeds

A Definition of High Technology

The word “technology” can also be used to refer to a collection of techniques. In this context, it is the current state of humanity’s knowledge of how to combine resources to produce desired products, to solve problems, fulfill needs, or satisfy wants; it includes technical methods, skills, processes, techniques, tools and raw materials. When combined with another term, such as “medical technology” or “space technology,” it refers to the state of the respective field's knowledge and tools. “State-of-the-art technology,” refers to the high technology (“high tech”)--technology that is at the cutting edge: the most advanced technology currently available--available to humanity in any field; the highest development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field achieved at a particular tie.

See: Military History: Overview

The early Hebrew and Islamic knowledge of medicine

Most of our knowledge of ancient Hebrew medicine during the 1st millenium BC, encompassing the Iron Age and sees the rise of many successive empires, and spanned from 1000 BC to 1 BC, come from the Torah, the Jewish name for the first five books of the Jewish Bible, i.e. the Five Books of Moses--Moses, as according to the Hebrew Bible and the Qur’an, is a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed. It contains various health related laws and rituals.

The Hebrew contribution to the development of modern medicine started in  the Byzantine Era (“Byzantium”), the Roman Empire during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople, with the physician Asaph the Jew, also known as “Asaph ben Berakhiah,” “Asaph Judaeus,” “Asaph ha-Jehoudi,” or “Assph ha-Jehoudi” and by other names, the first Hebrew medical writer, and has since been tremendous.

After 750 CE, the Muslim world had the works of Hippocrates, Galen and Sushruta translated into Arabic, and Islamic physicians engaged in some significant medical research, i.e. in the history of medicine, Islamic medicine, Arabic medicine, Greco-Arabic and Greco-Islamic refer to medicine developed in the Islamic Golden Age, and written in Arabic, the “lingua franca” of Islamic civilization.

Notable Islamic medical pioneers include Avicenna, a Persian polymath (“Renaissance man”), or a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas; he wrote almost 450 treatises in a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 survived. He, along with Imhotep and Hippocrates, has also been called the “father of medicine.” In 1025, he wrote “The Canon of Medicine,” an encyclopedia of medicine in five books, considered one of the most famous books in the history of medicine.

Others include: Abulcasis, an Arab physician who lived in Al-Andalus; Avenzoar, an Arab-Muslim physician, surgeon and a contemporary of Maimonides and Averroes; Averroes is an Andalusian Muslim polymath--master of Aristotelian philosophy, Islamic philosophy, Maliki law and jurisprudence, logic, psychology, politics, Arab music theory, and the sciences of medicine, astronomy, geography, mathematics, physics and celestial mechanics; and Ibn al-Nafis, an Arab physician who is mostly famous for being the first to describe the pulmonary circulation of the blood.

Rhazes (“Rasis”), a Persian polymath, a prominent figure in Islamic Golden Age, physician, alchemist and chemist, philosopher, and scholar, was one of the first to question the Greek theory of humorism (“humoralism”), a now discredited (but historically important) theory of the makeup and workings of the human body, adopted by Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers, positing that an excess or deficiency of any for distance bodily fluids in a person directly influences their temperament and health. Nevertheless, it remained influential in both medieval Western and medieval Islamic medicine.

The Islamic Bimaristan hospitals, an early example of public hospitals, or hospitals owned by a government and receives government funding.

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Shinya Yamanaka's Professional Career

Shinya Yamanaka is a Japanese physician and researcher of adult stem cells, or biological cells found in all multicellular organisms, that can divide through mitosis and differentiate into diverse specialized cell types and can self-renew to produce more stem cells.

Yamanaka serves as the director of Center for iPS Cell Research and Application and a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences at Kyoto University, or “Kyodai,” a national university located in Kyoto, Japan; and as a professor of anatomy at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), a center of health sciences research, patient care, and education, located in San Francisco, California. He is also the current president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR).

In 2011, he received the Wolf Prize in Medicine, awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation in Israel, with Rudolf Jaenisch, a biologist at MIT. This year, he won two prizes: the Millenium Technology Prize, the largest technology prizes in the world, together with Linus Torvalds, a Finnish American software engineer and hacker, who has the principal force behind the development of the Linux kernel; and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, administered by the Nobel Foundation, awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the fields of life sciences and medicine, together with John B. Gurdon.

Between 1987 and 1989, Yamanaka was a resident in orthopedic surgery at the National Osaka Hospital. From 1993 to 1996, he was at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, an independent and nonprofit biomedical research organization whose focus is to better understand, prevent, treat and cure cardiovascular, viral and neurological conditions such as heart failure, HIV/AIDS and Alzheimer’s disease; which is affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco (“UCSF”), a center of health sciences research, patient care, and education, located in San Francisco.

Between 1996 and 1999, he was an assistant professor, which is generally a rank held for a probationary period of three to seven years, after which the individual must either earn tenure and promotion to associate professor or find other employment, at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, abbreviated as NAIST, a Japanese national university located in Ikoma, Nara of Kansai Science City. During 2003-2005, he was a professor at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology. Between 2004 and 2010, Yamanaka was a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences. Currently, Yamanaka is the director and a professor at the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application in Kyoto University, Japan.

In 2006, he and his team induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), a type of pluripotent stem cell artificially derived from a non-pluripotent cell--typically an adult somatic cell--by inducing a “forced” expression of specific genes, from adult mouse fibroblasts, a type of cell that synthesizes the extracellular matrix and collagen, the structural framework (stroma) for animal tissues, and plays a critical role in wound healing.

iPS cells closely resemble embryonic stem cells (“ES cells”), pluripotent stem cells derived from the inner cell mass of the blastocyst, an early-stage embryo, the “in vitro” equivalent of the part of the blastocyst, a structure formed in the early development of vertebrates (the embryo a few days after fertilization), which grows to become which the embryo proper. They could show that his iPS cells were pluripotent, which in cell biology, refers to a stem cell that has the potential to differentiate into any of the three germ layers: endoderm (interior stomach lining, gastrointestinal tract, the lungs), mesoderm, (muscle (muscle, bone, blood, urogenital), or ectoderm (epidermal tissues and nervous system); i.e. capable of generating all cell lineages of the body, and were soon after capable of generating mice from iPS cells.

In 2007, he and his team generated iPS cells from human adult fibroblasts, again as the first group to do so. A key difference from previous attempts by the field was his team’s use of multiple transcription factors (sometimes called a sequence-specific DNA-binding factor), which in molecular biology and genetics, is a protein  that binds to specific DNA sequences, thereby controlling the flow (or transcription) of genetic information from DNA to mRNA. It is instead of transfecting, or the process deliberately introducing nucleic acids into cells, one transcription factor per experiment.

They started with 24 transcription factors known to be important in the early embryo, but could in the end reduce it to four transcription factors--SoX2, also known as “SRY (sex determining region-Y)-box 2, a transcription factor that is essential for maintaining self-renewal and pluripotency, of undifferentiated embryonic stem cells; Oct4 (octamer-binding transcription factor 4), also known as “POU5F1” (POU domain, class 5, transcription factor 1), a protein that in humans is encoded by the “POU5F1” gene; Klf4 (“Kruppel-like factor 4”), a protein that in humans is encoded by the “KLF4” gene; and, c-Myc (“Myc”), a regulator gene that codes for a transcription factor.

See: NewSat's VSAT Internet On Satellite Services

Harris and Tampa Microwave to launch Triband antenna at MILCOM 2012

Harris Corporation and Tampa Microwave have developed a powerful 1.3 meter triband satellite communications antenna together, which will be introduced at the upcoming MILCOM 2012 to be held in Orlando, Florida from October 29 to November 1. The single case antenna will be on display at the Harris’ booth together with the company’s line of antenna products. 

According to Harris, the new VSAT product supports X, Ku and Ka band communications services which can be utilized by military organizations for mission critical communications. The triband antenna has been developed to withstand rugged conditions of military operations. Named the “Seeker” the device has been designed for superior satellite tracking performance with low power consumption. It can also be bundled with satellite bandwidth services from Haprock’s list of satellite communications services. 

The 1.3 meter antenna is also portable, and can be easily set-up in just ten minutes. Harris’ latest VSAT product shares the same components like previously manufacture devices allowing for swappable electronics which lessens cost of ownership. The company teamed up with Tampa Microwave to equip the new triband antenna with an interchangeable, receiver/transmitter and outdoor modem module. 

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John Gurdon on ethics, politics, religion, and anti-theism

Sir John Bertrand Gurdon (JBG), on the other hand, is a British development biologist, the one who studies the process by which organisms grow and develop.

JBG is best known for his pioneering research on somatic-cell nuclear transplantation (“SCNT”), which in genetics and developmental biology, is a laboratory technique for creating a clone embryo with a donor nucleus; and cloning, also in biology, is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually.

In 2009, Gurdon was awarded the Lasker Award, which is awarded annually since 1946 to living persons who have made major contributions to medical science or who have performed public service on behalf of medicine. And this year, won a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, administered by the Nobel Foundation, awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the fields of life sciences and medicine, with Yamanaka.

Aside from the sciences, Gurdon also has a stand on other socio-political topics. Here’s his take on ethics, politics, religion and anti-theism: “[O]n politics I am middle of the road; one thing I do object to are people who do no work and assume that the state must support them; I have respect for people who put a lot into life and contribute; on religion, my father took us to Church every Sunday morning; I support the church; in terms of religious views I would say I am agnostic on the grounds of I don’t know; there is no scientific proof either way; I support the ethics of the Church of England; I am anti-Roman Catholic as I think they should let people decide for themselves on contraception; I find myself giving lectures to theology students from time to time; this happened because when Master of Magdalene College I thought the sermons were boring; I suggested to the Chaplain at Magdalene that he occasionally asked Fellows to give an address on anything they would like to talk about; the letter was not responded to but the Bishop of Coventry, Simon Barrington-Ward, came back to Magdalene and I mentioned the idea to him; he thought it a good idea and I was asked an address; I choose to take as a theme that you should not be prevented from trying to relieve human suffering by your religious views; l rather controversial, and the Chaplain didn’t like it all, (by this time I was Master of the College), he got preferment at Windsor and decided that it was interesting and invited me to give it to the theology students in Windsor Castle; I did so and he was very supportive; we disagree on a number of things but I continue do it; these are priests in service who come for revision classes, sent by their Bishop; after the talk I get them to vote; the first time they voted against the line I was tracking; the Chaplain suggested that the next time we have a secret vote and then it came out in favour; I like talking on to what extent religion should interfere in the relief of suffering; a classic case is cystic fibrosis and should you get rid of embryos that are going to have it by in vitro-fertilization, and avoid enormous suffering; as Master of Magdalene never found any difficulty in presiding in Chapel; I don’t think an agnostic position is inappropriate; I support what the church does very strongly, but the fact that I can’t prove what we believe is a good reason to be called agnostic; Richard Dawkins’ views are rather too aggressive but make him good as a television presenter; he was a graduate student shortly after me and worked under Tinbergen; he does ineterest people in science and that is good though I wouldn’t agree with his views on religion.”

See: http://www.newsat.com/VSAT/broadband.html

The Professional Career of Shinya Yamanaka, 2012 Nobel Prize Awardee by John Diaz

Shinya Yamanaka is a Japanese physician and researcher of adult stem cells, or biological cells found in all multicellular organisms, that can divide through mitosis and differentiate into diverse specialized cell types and can self-renew to produce more stem cells.

Yamanaka serves as the director of Center for iPS Cell Research and Application and a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences at Kyoto University, or “Kyodai,” a national university located in Kyoto, Japan; and as a professor of anatomy at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), a center of health sciences research, patient care, and education, located in San Francisco, California. He is also the current president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR).

In 2011, he received the Wolf Prize in Medicine, awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation in Israel, with Rudolf Jaenisch, a biologist at MIT. This year, he won two prizes: the Millenium Technology Prize, the largest technology prizes in the world, together with Linus Torvalds, a Finnish American software engineer and hacker, who has the principal force behind the development of the Linux kernel; and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, administered by the Nobel Foundation, awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the fields of life sciences and medicine, together with John B. Gurdon.

Between 1987 and 1989, Yamanaka was a resident in orthopedic surgery at the National Osaka Hospital. From 1993 to 1996, he was at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, an independent and nonprofit biomedical research organization whose focus is to better understand, prevent, treat and cure cardiovascular, viral and neurological conditions such as heart failure, HIV/AIDS and Alzheimer’s disease; which is affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco (“UCSF”), a center of health sciences research, patient care, and education, located in San Francisco.

Between 1996 and 1999, he was an assistant professor, which is generally a rank held for a probationary period of three to seven years, after which the individual must either earn tenure and promotion to associate professor or find other employment, at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, abbreviated as NAIST, a Japanese national university located in Ikoma, Nara of Kansai Science City. During 2003-2005, he was a professor at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology. Between 2004 and 2010, Yamanaka was a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences. Currently, Yamanaka is the director and a professor at the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application in Kyoto University, Japan.

In 2006, he and his team induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), a type of pluripotent stem cell artificially derived from a non-pluripotent cell--typically an adult somatic cell--by inducing a “forced” expression of specific genes, from adult mouse fibroblasts, a type of cell that synthesizes the extracellular matrix and collagen, the structural framework (stroma) for animal tissues, and plays a critical role in wound healing.

iPS cells closely resemble embryonic stem cells (“ES cells”), pluripotent stem cells derived from the inner cell mass of the blastocyst, an early-stage embryo, the “in vitro” equivalent of the part of the blastocyst, a structure formed in the early development of vertebrates (the embryo a few days after fertilization), which grows to become which the embryo proper. They could show that his iPS cells were pluripotent, which in cell biology, refers to a stem cell that has the potential to differentiate into any of the three germ layers: endoderm (interior stomach lining, gastrointestinal tract, the lungs), mesoderm, (muscle (muscle, bone, blood, urogenital), or ectoderm (epidermal tissues and nervous system); i.e. capable of generating all cell lineages of the body, and were soon after capable of generating mice from iPS cells.

In 2007, he and his team generated iPS cells from human adult fibroblasts, again as the first group to do so. A key difference from previous attempts by the field was his team’s use of multiple transcription factors (sometimes called a sequence-specific DNA-binding factor), which in molecular biology and genetics, is a protein  that binds to specific DNA sequences, thereby controlling the flow (or transcription) of genetic information from DNA to mRNA. It is instead of transfecting, or the process deliberately introducing nucleic acids into cells, one transcription factor per experiment.

They started with 24 transcription factors known to be important in the early embryo, but could in the end reduce it to four transcription factors--SoX2, also known as “SRY (sex determining region-Y)-box 2, a transcription factor that is essential for maintaining self-renewal and pluripotency, of undifferentiated embryonic stem cells; Oct4 (octamer-binding transcription factor 4), also known as “POU5F1” (POU domain, class 5, transcription factor 1), a protein that in humans is encoded by the “POU5F1” gene; Klf4 (“Kruppel-like factor 4”), a protein that in humans is encoded by the “KLF4” gene; and, c-Myc (“Myc”), a regulator gene that codes for a transcription factor.

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Capability development, the military "strength"

Capability development, which is often referred to as the military “strength,” is arguably one of the most complex activities known to humanity because it requires determining: strategic, operational and tactical capability requirements to counter the identified threats; strategic, operational and tactical doctrines by which the acquired capabilities will be used; identifying concepts, methods and systems involved in executing the doctrines; creating design specifications for the manufacturers who would produce these in adequate quantity and quality for their use in combat; purchase the concepts, methods and systems; create force structures that would use the concepts, methods and systems most effectively and efficiently; integrate these concepts, methods and systems into the force syoceture by providing military education and training, a process which intends to establish and improve the capabilities of military personnel in their respective roles, and practice, or “military exercise” and “war game” in American English, the employment of military resources in training for military operations, either exploring the effects of warfare or testing strategies without actual combat, that preferably resembles combat environment of intended use; create military logistics systems, the discipline of planning and carrying out the movement and maintenance of military forces, to allow continued and uninterrupted performance of military organizations, or the structuring of the armed forces of a state so as to offer military capability required by the national defence policy, under combat conditions, including provision of health services to the personnel and maintenance for the equipment the services to assist recovery of wounded personnel and repair of damaged equipment and finally post-conflict mobilization, the process of standing down a nation's armed forces from combat-ready status, and disposal of war stocks surplus to peacetime requirements.

Development of military doctrine, the concise expression of how many forces contribute to campaigns, major operations, battles, and engagements, is perhaps the more important of all capability development activities because it determines how military forces were, and are used in conflicts. It also determines the concepts and methods used by the command to employ appropriately military skilled, armed--a “soldier” is the one who fights as part of an organized land-based armed force; if that force is for hire, the person is generally termed a mercenary soldier, or mercenary--and equipped personnel in achievement of the tangible goals and objectives; military technology is the collection of equipment, vehicles, structure and communication systems that are designed for use in warfare. This could be for the following: war, an organized, armed and often a prolonged conflict that is carried on between states, nations, or rather parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality; campaign, in military sciences, applies to a large scale, long duration, significant military strategy plan incorporating a series of interrelated military operations or battles forming a distinct part of a larger conflict often called a war; battle, generally is a conceptual component in the hierarchy of combat in warfare between two or more armed forces, or combatants; engagement; action; or a duel, generally signifying an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.

The line between strategy and tactics is not easily blurred, although deciding which is being discussed had sometimes been a matter of personal judgment by some commentators, and military historians. The use of forces at the level of organization between strategic and tactical is called operational mobility. It is a military theory concept during the period of mechanization of armed forces, became a method of managing movement of forces by strategic commanders from the staging area to their Tactical Area of Responsibility.   

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Military and Technology: War Finance: A Major Part of Defense Economy

Military and Technology: War Finance: A Major Part of Defense Economy: The term “war finance,” branch of defense economics, denotes a number of measures including fiscal and monetary initiatives to fund the expe...

War Finance: A Major Part of Defense Economy

The term “war finance,” branch of defense economics, denotes a number of measures including fiscal and monetary initiatives to fund the expenditure of a war, an organized, armed, and often a prolonged conflict that is carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality.

Such measures are broadly classified in three categories: levy of taxes, the imposed financial charge or other levy upon a “taxpayer,” an individual or legal entity, by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law; raising of debts, an obligation owed by one party (the debtor) to a second party (the creditor), usually referring to assets granted by the creditor to the debtor, but the term can also be used metaphorically to cover moral obligations and other interactions not based on economic value; and creation of fresh money supply, or “money stock,” which in economics, is the total amount of monetary assets available in an economy at a specific time. Thus, these measure may include levy of specific taxation, increase and enlarging the scope of existing taxation, raising of compulsory and voluntary loans from the public, arranging loans from foreign sovereign states or financial institutions, as also creation of money by the government or the central banking authority.   

Throughout the history of human civilization, from the ancient time until the modern era, conflicts and wars have always been involved in raising of resources and war finance has remained, in some form or another, a major part of any defense economy.

Every nation in the history of mankind had different needs for military forces. The basis of their composition, equipment and use of facilities is formed when the needs are determined. Aside from that, it also determines what military does in terms of peacetime and wartime activities.

All militaries, whether large or small, are military organizations, or the structuring of the armed forces of a state so as to offer military capability required by the national defence policy. They must perform certain functions and fulfill certain roles to qualify for being designated as such. If they fail to do so, they may become known as: paramilitary, a military force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state’s formal armed forces; civil defense, “civil protection,” an effort to protect the citizens of a state, generally non-combatants, from military attack; militia, or irregular army, commonly used to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service; or others which are not military. The commonalities of that state’s military define them.

Another requirement is for the military command personnel, often called their officer corps, a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority, to command subordinated military personnel, a blanket term used to refer to members of any formed force. They are generally known as soldiers, the people who fight as part of an organized land-based armed force, however generally called a mercenary soldier, or simply mercenary, if that force is hiring the person; sailors (“mariners,” or “seaman”), a person who navigates water-borne vessels or assists in their operation, maintenance, or service; marines, a member of an infantry force that specialized in naval operations such as amphibious assault; or airmen, members of the air component of a nation’s armed service. They are capable of executing the many specialized operational missions and tasks required for the military to execute the policy directives. Military also has its projects, and routines; ”military administration” which identifies both the techniques and systems used by military departments, agencies, and Armed Services involved in the management of the armed forces. It is just like in the commercial enterprises, (also known as a “business,” or a “firm”) when an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers, where there are, in a corporate setting, directors, managers, and various staff that carry out the business of the day as part of business operations, or those ongoing recurring (cyclic) activities involved in the running of a business of the purpose of producing value for the stakeholders, or undertake business project management, or the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, managing, leading and controlling resources to achieve specific goals.   

During peacetime when military personnel are mostly employed in garrisons, the collective term of a body of troops stationed in a particular location, originally to guard it, but now often simply using it as a home base, or permanent military facilities they mostly conduct administrative tasks, “military education and training,”  a process which intends to establish and improve the capabilities of military personnel in their respective roles, and technology maintenance. Technology maintenance can be called as ”maintenance, repair, and operations” (“MRO”), or “maintenance, repair, and overhaul,” which involves fixing any sort of mechanical, plumbing or electrical device should it become out of order or broken (known as repair, unscheduled or casualty maintenance).

Another role of military personnel is to ensure a continuous replacement of departing servicemen and women through military recruitment, or the act of requesting people, usually male adults, to join a military voluntarily, and the maintenance of a “military reserve,” “tactical reserve,” “strategic reserve,” “reserve formation,” or simply “reserve,” a group of military personnel or units which are initially not committed to a battle by their commander or that they are available to address unforeseen situations or exploit suddenly developing opportunities.

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