Lunes, Nobyembre 26, 2012

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).

See: Internet From Satellite

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

Huwebes, Nobyembre 15, 2012

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)?

Linggo, Nobyembre 11, 2012

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