Lothiack

Not yet, though we've been trying to do so since at least the 1970s. Fabricating an environment that needs no power other than the sun and is a closed system (where waste gets broken down and reused) is extremely difficult.

One of the first attempts at a CELSS-Controlled Ecological Life Support System-was Bios-3, which was completed by Soviet scientists in Siberia in 1972. The 11,124-square-foot enclosed habitat could support three people. Oxygen was recycled by large pools of algae, and when everything ran right, the system could produce about 85 percent of the air and water its inhabitants required. The longest mission lasted 180 days.

NASA began its BioHome experiment in 1989 in a life-support system about the size of a double-wide trailer. Researchers studied wastewater treatment and the effects of indoor air quality in a synthetic environment and found, not surprisingly, that plants greatly improved the air and made occupants healthier. Biosphere 2, which was launched in 1991 near Tucson, Arizona, was the largest CELSS and is now both a lab and museum.

A new biodome, called the Biotron, opened in Western Ontario in 2007. It was built to test the effects of rising temperatures on ecosystems. The Biotron houses massive 20-foot-high columns, each filled with 22,000 pounds of soil. Researchers subject the dirt to temperatures ranging from -40˚ to 104˚F to better understand the biology of our warming Earth. The Biotron is the first lab that can test climate models in this way, giving scientists a look at the future of this planet--the only working biosphere they know of.

This article appeared in the June 2011 issue of Popular Science magazine.

Editor's Note Although batteries are great for some things, they aren't quite up to storing large-scale solar power for later use. That's why many people are trying to make fuel from light instead.

"The idea is to take the energy in light and store it as a fuel we can use later. So we made the GRAFSTRR (Gravity-Fed Solar-Thermochemical Receiver/Reactor)-a 1,000-pound cylinder of insulated steel, about 3 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall. In the lab, 10 lamps simulate only 10 to 20 kilowatts of sunlight. (In the real world, though, tens of thousands of small mirrors across a field would reflect sunlight into the reactor.) The light enters the top of the reactor and passes through a circular quartz window that keeps out air, which can contaminate the chemical reaction inside. At the light's most concentrated and hottest point-3,000°F-it enters the reaction cavity.

Fifteen hoppers drop zinc oxide powder into the cavity. When the radiation there hits the zinc oxide, it breaks the bond between the zinc and the oxygen, making free zinc. In the future, a second reactor would use the zinc to strip the oxygen from water, making hydrogen gas.Theoretically, we could capture about 40 percent of the energy, but in lab experiments to demonstrate the design, we get less than 3 percent. Our reactor is mostly a proof-of-concept, but I think it could be scaled up in my kids' lifetime."

--Erik Koepf is a mechanical engineer. He worked on the reactor as a graduate student at the University of Delaware, in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

This article originally appeared in the September 2013 issue of Popular Science.

A new low-cost, highly automated rocket from Japan's space agency launched Saturday with just eight crew members and two laptops on-site. Japan's previous launches required teams of 150.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency sent the first of its new generation of launch vehicles into orbit carrying a telescope that will observe the atmospheres of Venus, Mars and Jupiter. The telescope's measurements will provide astronomers with clues to events early in the solar system's history, according to the agency's description of the project.

"A large control room could be integrated into a single laptop PC," the rocket's project manager, Yasuhiro Morita, said in a statement in 2011.

‘We are trying to make rocket launches much simpler and ordinary events.'The new rocket, called Epsilon, has artificial intelligence to perform its own safety checks. Its computer system reduces the number of people needed at a launch site from the 150 that were standard at Japan's previous space launches.

Japan's space program, JAXA, developed both its Epsilon Launch Vehicle and the small satellite carrying the planet-viewing telescope so that it could launch more missions, more frequently. "We are trying to make rocket launches much simpler and ordinary events," Morita said.

The agency retired Epsilon's predecessor, a rocket called M-5, seven years ago because of its high costs, the BBC reported. It took $37 million to develop the Epsilon, half of what it cost to develop the M-5.

The mission was originally supposed to launch in August, but blastoff was first delayed, and then cancelled, apparently because of computer glitches. JAXA reported Saturday's launch went fine and that the satellite, now in orbit, is "in good health."

[Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, BBC]

More than two million Americans get sick every year with infections that defy modern antibiotics. At least 23,000 Americans die each year. Such infections may account for as much as $20 billion in extra healthcare costs and $35 billion in lost productivity.

These big numbers come from a report, published today, by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report looks at the so-called "superbugs" that modern American healthcare and farming practices have bred.

"If we're not careful, the medicine chest will be empty when we go there to look for a life-saving antibiotic," CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden said during a conference call for reporters. "Without urgent action now, more patients will be thrust back to a time before we had effective drugs."

Many places have reported on the new CDC analysis so don't let our coverage be your first and last stop. (The Washington Post's writeup is good.) Here's just a primer on the major questions the report tackles.

What are antibiotic-resistant infections? How do they arise?

Antibiotic-resistant infections develop from using antibiotics. As the CDC report says, "Antibiotics are a limited resource. The more that antibiotics are used today, the less likely they will still be effective in the future."

It's worse if people take antibiotics when they don't need them, or when doctors prescribe unnecessary antibiotics to their patients. Farmers also contribute to the problem by feeding antibiotics to their livestock.

When people (or animals) take antibiotics they don't need, the medicines kill off most bacteria, while leaving behind a few germs that are naturally, genetically resistant to the treatment. Over time, antibiotic use breeds more and more resistant germs. In addition, the weird biology of bacteria means that they are able to easily share genes with one another, further spreading antibiotic resistance.

People can harbor their own resistant bacteria, get infected with resistant bacteria from another person, or encounter resistant bacteria from unhygienic processes in food production.

Who's to blame?

Up to half of the antibiotics doctors prescribe to patients aren't needed or aren't prescribed correctly, according to the CDC report.

Farmers use antibiotics to cure or prevent diseases in their livestock. In addition, some farmers give their cows, pigs and chickens low doses of antibiotics to make them grow faster. This is unnecessarily and should stop, the CDC says.

What are the worst infections?

The CDC divided the resistant bacteria it knows about into three categories: urgent, serious and concerning. The urgent pathogens include:

• Clostridium difficile, a diarrheal infection that kills an additional 14,000 Americans annually.
• Some members of the family of bacteria called enterobacteriaceae. Examples include some types of E. coli and Klebsiella species.
• Some gonorrhea infections.

Clostridium difficile and drug-resistant enterobacteriaceae are generally infections people get while they are in hospitals, from their catheters, breathing machines and other invasive equipment.

What is the CDC going to do about it?

The U.S. health agency says it will work to prevent infections, track infections when they happen and try to develop new drugs. Most importantly, it will need to change how people use antibiotics.

"Index Subject 1"-the anonymous girl or woman who participated in this new study-is unusual in a couple of ways. For one thing, she cannot feel pain. It's a dangerous condition for her. Photos published in a paper about her show severe injuries to her head, face and knee, the latter of which she has fractured multiple times.

For another, she has a super-rare gene mutation, which the scientists couldn't find in any of the human genome databases they scoured. That gene mutation, the researchers think, is what protects Index Subject 1 from pain.

Index Subject 1's story is a cool bit of genetic sleuthing. It could also help her in the future: If a single mutation really is the root of most of her symptoms, then researchers could come up with a drug to target the specific protein her mutated gene makes. Her gene could also be a target for future painkillers for others' chronic pain. However, there's no immediate solution for her in this study, nor for the anonymous male the researchers later found who had the same mutation as she did.
Researchers compared Index Subject 1's genes with several human genome databases. They found just one genetic mutation that appeared in her, and nobody else.

Index Subject 1's research team-including scientists from Belgium, Sweden, and her home country, Germany-found her mutation by analyzing the genomes of both her and her parents. The researchers compared the family's genes with several human genome databases, such as "1,000 Genomes," which includes all the genes of 1,092 people from 14 populations. The scientists found a single genetic mutation that appeared in Index Subject 1, but nowhere else.

The mutation affected a gene called SCN11A, which makes a protein that controls how much sodium goes in and out of cells in the human body. That's a small job, but an important one. Nerves have many of these sodium channels, and they use their interior sodium concentrations to decide whether to send a signal-to pass on a message of pain, for example, or to call up a memory. The particular type of sodium channel that was mutated in Index Subject 1 is abundant in nociceptors, the types of nerves that sense pain. Sounds pretty relevant, right?

The researchers then analyzed the genes of 58 people with reduced pain perception. They found one boy or man, Index Subject 2, who had the same mutation as Index Subject 1. He also had many of the same symptoms. Both had never been able to feel pain since birth. Both frequently hurt themselves, even fracturing their bones multiple times. Their wounds healed slowly, their muscles were weaker than normal, and they had severe digestive trouble, sometimes requiring IV feeding.

To check that this mutation was truly behind Index Subject 1 and Index Subject 2's symptoms, the researchers put the mutated gene into lab mice. Out of 101 mice in which they added the SCN11A mutation, 11 gave themselves self-inflicted wounds. When researchers injected the mice with a chemical that made the paws swell up, the mutated mice didn't protect the swollen paw the way normal mice do. The mutated mice were able to withstand much higher temperatures before showing discomfort, compared to normal mice. And their bowels didn't move as well as normal mice's.

All this is evidence that Index Subject 1 and 2's medical problems truly do come from this single mutation-an unusual event in genetics, where disease often stem from the interactions of many genes. We hope this means a treatment will be relatively easy to find.

The European research team published their work in the journal Nature Genetics.

The latest outbreak of measles in the U.S.-a preventable disease that the Western Hemisphere eradicated decades ago, thanks to vaccines-has been traced to a megachurch in Texas. The church's senior pastor, Terri Pearsons, had previously criticized vaccines, USA Today reports.

The outbreak sickened 25 kids and adults. At least 12 of them weren't fully immunized. Others had no records of immunization. One ill child is 4 months old, too young to have received the measles vaccine. On average, among 1,000 kids who contract measles, one gets a serious brain infection called encephalitis and one or two kids die.

After the outbreak, the church offered its members free immunizations and urged the congregation to get vaccinated, which sounds great. But a statement from church leaders, issued last week, still includes some troubling, unscientific claims. For one, Pearsons suggested that excessive amounts of vitamin D may bolster the body against measles. There is no evidence to support that.

The Eagle Mountain International Church in Newark, Texas, released a statement for its members on August 15, the day after the Tarrant County Public Health Department informed the church that one of its missionaries, who traveled to a country where measles is still endemic, had brought the virus back to the church.

In the statement, Pearsons wrote things like, "I believe it is wrong to be against vaccinations" and "the disease is only shut down when all are immunized." At the same time, she also supported some strange, untrue ideas.
In a statement about the church's measles outbreak, Pearsons urged adults and kids to take three times as much vitamin D as their recommended daily allowance.

"The concerns we have had are primarily with very young children who have family history of autism and with bundling too many immunizations at one time," she wrote. The statement suggests there's some link between vaccines and autism, when there is none. It also suggests following the recommended vaccine schedule is somehow dangerous. The recommended schedule has never been linked to getting diseases later in life, nor is there any evidence that getting vaccines at a young age is harmful to babies.

In addition to urging them to get vaccinated, Pearsons told her congregation to take excessive amounts of Vitamin D. "I also strongly recommend taking vitamin D at 1,000 units a day for young children and 2,000 units a day for older children and adults, ongoing. This is an effective immune system booster," she wrote.

First, vitamin D does not protect against measles. Second, that's about three times as much vitamin D as kids and adults need. For kids younger than 7 months, 1,000 international units is actually the upper recommended daily limit for vitamin D intake. And babies don't just get vitamin D from supplements. They also get some through breast milk, formula and exposure to the sun, so infants taking 1,000 units' worth of vitamin D supplements a day could easily exceed their daily limits. (Other children's upper daily limits are higher, depending on their age, culminating in 4,000 international units for kids and adults age nine and older.)

I didn't find anything in the research literature about the infant- and kid-specific effects of ingesting too much vitamin D, but here's how it impacts adults. Most studies found that adults ingesting at least 10,000 international units of vitamin D a day have an increased risk symptoms such as weight loss, excessive urine production, heart arrhythmias, and damage to the heart, blood vessels, and kidneys. Some studies suggest people can damage their health by regularly ingesting 5,000 international units of vitamin D a day. This is not like sports or your career. You're not supposed to aim at your upper limit.

Bottom line: Eagle Mountain International Church may offer some great spiritual guidance-I wouldn't know-but I wouldn't take my health advice from there.

3-D printing may be the way of the future, but for the average Joe, actually getting ahold of a 3-D printer to use on the cheap remains somewhat challenging.

Starting this week, though, 3-D printing will be as easy as swiping a library card for Chicago residents. The city's main downtown library, the Harold Washington Library Center, has opened up a free maker lab that anyone can access, with three MakerBot 3-D printers, laser cutters and a milling machine. It's the first maker space to open in a major urban library.

For now, the grant money provided to run the lab is only available till the end of the year, so the space is temporary. The library staff will then evaluate whether to continue the project.

Librarians will have to approve whatever designs end up being printed, the Chicago Tribune writes, and they've already vetoed 3-D printed weapons. So far, the staff has been messing around with the new machines themselves, making wooden iPhone docks, custom keychains and 3-D printed chess sets to get a feel for how they work, according to Ars Technica.

Teachers and business owners have been "e-mailing nonstop," Ars reports, asking the library how they can get in on the action. No surprise there: We hear you can 3-D print some cool things these days.

[Ars Technica]