Science & biotech

NASA awards $100,000 in aviation contest

SONOMA COUNTY, Calif.--When it comes to flying, being green isn't easy.

Here at NASA's second annual General Aviation Challenge this weekend, one of the main prizes was the so-called "green prize," which challenged two-seater planes to fly a 400-mile-long course logging at least 30 miles to the gallon. None of the four planes entered won the $50,000 prize; the best attempt achieved 28.8 miles per gallon. (NASA's ultimate goal is to get the green prize to at least 100 miles per hour and the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon.

The shoe-in … Read more

Date set to fire up world's most-powerful particle accelerator

A date has finally been announced for the switching on of the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider.

The LHC is located in a nearly 17-mile-long circular tunnel that lies beneath the French-Swiss border. The first attempt to circulate a beam of particles around the tunnel will take place on September 10, according to a statement Thursday by the LHC's builders, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN.

This event will follow a long commissioning process that has seen the structure cooled down to 1.9 degrees above absolute zero (-27 degrees … Read more

Martian soil turns up toxic chemical

NASA's Phoenix Lander team said this week it has found a toxic chemical in the soil of Mars' northern hemisphere, where it has previously confirmed the existence of water.

The University of Arizona-based team believes the chemical is perchlorate, an oxidant typically used in solid rocket fuel. The scientists are still analyzing the soil sample to make sure it wasn't brought to Mars from Earth, according to a statement. But if the oxidant is native, it would bar the possibility of life there.

"While we have not completed our process on these soil samples, we have very … Read more

Next try for $2 million lunar-landing challenge

Ten teams are signed up once again to compete in the NASA-sponsored Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, a $2 million contest to simulate a moon flight in the New Mexico desert.

The X Prize Foundation, the event's host, announced the team lineup Tuesday, saying it is confident that this year, after two years of unsuccessful attempts, NASA will award the prize money. However, in a potentially cautionary move, the 2008 event in late October at New Mexico's Holloman Air Force Base will be closed to the public for the first time. People can watch it live via the … Read more

Armadillo Aerospace tries again for $2 million lunar lander challenge

Ten teams are signed up once again to compete in the NASA-sponsored Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, a $2 million contest to simulate a moon flight in the New Mexico desert.

This story was inadvertently double-posted. For the full story, click here.

NASA extends Mars lander mission, search for water

A correction was made to this story after it was published. See below for details.

NASA's planning to spend another month and $2 million on its Mars robotic lander mission to obtain more icy soil samples, study the weather, and size up the planet's suitability for human life.

In a press conference Thursday, NASA scientists said that the Mars Phoenix Lander mission has been going so well that it plans to extend the vehicle's stay through the end of September, instead of August. On May 25, the Phoenix landed more than 200 million miles away from Earth, … Read more

New fashions for Fall-ing

It's a problem we all face at some point: parents or grandparents start to get wobbly as they get older, followed by the inevitable falls and broken bones from which they frequently never fully recover. A team of Virginia Tech researchers has recently completed a study of the efficacy of pants with strategically placed sensors to determine the likelihood that a particular individual will take a tumble.

In a nutshell (you can read the abstract at IEEE Xplor, but the paper itself will be behind a paywall when it's published), Liu, Lockhart, Jones, and Martin from Virginia Tech's e-Textiles Lab … Read more

Intel's in-home health device gets FDA nod

The new Intel Health Guide--which collects vital signs and allows for remote interactions between patient and doctor--may soon make its way into the homes of consumers with chronic health conditions such as diabetes and congestive heart failure.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the medical device, Intel announced Thursday.

The 8-pound in-home gadget connects caregivers and patients outside of hospitals or clinic settings. It manages vital-sign collection, patient reminders, educational content, and motivational messages. The device has a 40GB hard drive.

Information collected by the device is sent to the health care professional, and from there, physician and patient … Read more

Study: Prescription-free drug sites still abound

Improved e-mail filtering and government crackdowns might've deterred some of the once-ubiquitous spammers peddling prescription-free Viagra on the Web, but a new study from Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse has found that many of those sites are still alive and kicking.

The CASA study, resulting from its fifth annual "You've Got Drugs!" investigation, did find that there has been a decline in the total count of Web sites hawking controlled drugs: 365 of them, compared to 581 in 2007's study.

But it's still alarming, CASA said, because few of … Read more

IBM supercomputer to aid osteoporosis treatment

IBM says it has developed a way to use one of its supercomputers to improve diagnosis and treatment of the widespread bone disease osteoporosis.

IBM Zurich Research Laboratory and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (also known as ETH Zurich) utilized an IBM supercomputer to develop a method of early diagnosis that they say trumps the current approach to measuring bone mass density, the computer company announced Monday.

According to the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, the current most widely recognized bone mass density test is conducted by a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, or DXA. However, … Read more