May 5, 2013 ? Peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) with radiolabeled somatostatin analogs, an established treatment for cancer patients, could offer a novel therapeutic approach to decrease levels of inflammation in the atherosclerotic plaques of patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD), reported an abstract? study at the International Conference on Nuclear Cardiology and Cardiac CT, May 5 to 8 in Berlin, Germany.
"Our results should act as a stimulus for further exploration of radionuclide based interventions in atherosclerosis. Ultimately such therapies might be used to lower the degree of inflammation in atherosclerosis which has the potential to reduce the occurrence of heart attacks," said Imke Schatka, the first author of the study from the Department of Nuclear Medicine at Hannover Medical School, Germany.
PRRT is a technique currently used to treat patients with metastatic neuroendocrine tumours (NETS), a diverse group of malignancies deriving from the neuroendocrine cell system (the most frequent locations being pancreas, small intestine and lung).
The discovery of over expression of somatostatin receptors (SSTR) on NET tumours first opened the way for development of radiolabelled somatostatin analogs to image tumours during PET/CT scans. DOTATATE is a somatostatin receptor (SSTR) ligand targeting SSTR-2, a receptor known to be expressed on 70% of NET tumours. Once tumours have been visualized, it is possible to target therapy by attaching the beta-emitter ??? Lutetium (???Lu) to the ligand.
Active inflammation has been widely implicated in the initiation, progression and disruption of vulnerable plaques, and consequently offers an emerging target for the imaging and treatment of atherosclerosis. "Since SSTR-2 receptors are also expressed on macrophages we speculated that DOTATATE-PET/CT might be used to detect vulnerable plaques and that a PRRT procedure could reduce inflammation in the arterial wall," explained Schatka.
For the current study, 11 patients (from a group of 165 undergoing PRRT for NET tumours) were retrospectively identified because they met the criteria of only receiving the beta emitter???Lu treatment after undergoing two consecutive scans, with a third scan following treatment.
For each of the three scans, vessel wall uptake of the DOTATATE ligand was measured in six arterial segments of PET images (carotid, aortic arch, ascending, descending, abdominal aorta, and iliac arteries) and then the overall vessel uptake was determined for each individual patient.
Results showed that for the first scan the overall vessel uptake of the ligand correlated with the age of the patient (P<0.01), the number of calcified plaques (P<0.001) and furthermore was higher in subjects with hypercholesterolemia (p=0.04). No significant differences in overall vessel uptakes were found between scans 1 and 2, confirming reproducibility in the absence of treatment.
However, when treatment with the beta-emitter ??? Lu-DOTATATE was delivered following scan 2, scan 3 showed significant reductions in the overall vessel uptake of the ligand when compared with both scan 1 (p=0.001) and scan 2 (p=0.004).
"Uptake of the ligand can be considered to be a measure of the quantity of SSTR receptors, which in turn is likely to correlate with the number of activated macrophages and the extent of the inflammatory process," explained Schatka. "Our results suggest that treatment has had a beneficial effect in reducing inflammation."
The next step, said Schatka, would be to get histological proof that reductions in inflammation really had been imaged with DOTATATE-PET/CT by looking at carotid artery samples removed from patients during routine surgery.
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By Ken Y-N ( May 3, 2013 at 18:51)
? Filed under Lifestyle, Polls
Today?s quickie is from Research Panel?s Day Research, looking at going to the book store or convenience store and reading books on display, called ????, tachiyomi, literally ?reading standing up?, as the photo below illustrates.
137,793 of the Research Panel monitors answered the question ?Have you ever gone to a book store, convenience store, etc, read books standing up, then left without buying anything?? on the 2nd and 3rd of May 2013. 29.5% admitted to often leaving without buying, 41.8% to sometimes leaving without buying, 12.1% had never left without buying, 14.8% had never done reading standing up with or without buying, and finally 1.9% didn?t go to book stores or convenience stores.
Spark Devices wants the inclusion of WiFi in devices to be a matter of when, not if -- and if its new Spark Core gets to market as planned, tinkerers might never have a moment of doubt. The tiny board combines an Arduino-compatible ARM Cortex-M3 platform with a TI CC3000 WiFi chip that not only simplifies getting online, but could save the DIY crowd from having to touch projects afterward. Owners can flash the firmware with new code over WiFi, for a start. A free Spark Cloud service also allows for custom apps that interface with the Core through seemingly anything with an internet connection: if you want to reconfigure a homebrew security camera from your phone, you can. While Spark Devices is relying on crowdfunding to fuel its connected strategy, the company is comfortably past its $10,000 goal and should deliver both the Spark Core ($39) and optional shields to new contributors around September.
Ron Johnson's tenure at JCPenney, greeted with so much optimism, quickly turned into a disaster.
Constant layoffs, a culture of secrecy, and distrust of Johnson's management team left many employees, and even executives, miserable.?
His departure was greeted with widespread relief, a JCPenney regional executive told the Huffington Post's Kim Bhasin:?
?I saw store employees crying from excitement and joy,? he said. ?They told me, ?Thankfully someone has finally listened to us. I just hope it?s not too late to save J.C. Penney.'?
It wasn't just about the frequent firings, though those certainly took a toll,?or the company's poor performance.
One of Johnson's signature efforts was to completely eliminate the company's promotions program without testing it first. Not only did the strategy confuse and alienate customers, but frequent changes damaged employee morale, and made the stores run poorly.?
After Johnson admitted defeat and embraced sales and coupons again early this year, his management team set an extremely tight deadline to completely revamp the labels and signage.
But by then, he had eliminated a position at every store in charge of signs and visuals. As a result, many of the signs were misprinted and sometimes unreadable, with incorrect price points, and they were sent out too late, Bhasin reports.
It was chaos.
Some argue that Johnson wasn't given enough time. The attitude on the ground seems to be that he might have been given too much.
The company just?released an ad, ironically conceived while Johnson was still CEO, admitting its mistakes, rebranding the company, and asking for customers to return.
JCPenney is?burning cash at an alarming rate, so it needs consumers to give them another chance sooner, rather than later.
TORONTO -- For the month of April, Mike Napoli was the hottest hitter for the Red Sox and Clay Buchholz was their best starting pitcher.
Now that it's May, nothing has changed.
Buchholz dominated with seven shutout innings during which he allowed just two hits while Napoli slammed two tape-measure homers and accounted for half the Red Sox' runs in a 10-1 blowout of the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Sox belted five homers -- two from Napoli and one each from Stephen Drew, Daniel Nava and Mike Carp -- to give them 16 homers in five games against the Blue Jays this season. The club has 15 homers in its other 22 games combined.
In five games at Rogers Centre this season, the Sox have scored 36 runs -- and were shut out in one of those games.
Napoli had four RBI on the night, giving him 31 for the season.
Buchholz improved to 6-0 and lowered his ERA to 1.01 for the season. That's the lowest ERA for a Red Sox starter through the first six starts in a season since Roger Clemens had a 0.73 in 1991.
The Jays didn't advance a baserunner past first until Buchholz's final inning when Melky Cabrera singled Adam Lind (walk) to third base. They managed a run off Alex Wilson in the eighth to spoil the shutout bid.
AT A GLANCE
STAR OF THE GAME: Clay Buchholz Buchholz tossed seven shutout innings and allowed just hits. It wasn't until his final inning of work that the Blue Jays got a baserunner into scoring position as Buchholz improved to 6-0 and lowered his ERA to 1.01.
HONORABLE MENTION: Mike Napoli Napoli unleashed the power, with two tape-measure homers and a run-scoring double, accounting for 10 total bases and four RBI.
GOAT OF THE GAME: Mark Buehrle The Toronto starter gave up five hits -- and three of them were homers -- as the Red Sox raced out to a 4-0 lead after four and 8-0 through the seventh, Buehrle's final inning of work.
TURNING POINT: The way Buchholz was cruising, the back-to-back homers by Napoli and Daniel Nava in the top of the fourth made it 4-0 and effectively pushed the game out of reach.
BY THE NUMBERS: With four homers in the first 27 games, Daniel Nava is one homer shy of matching his total for all of last season.
QUOTE OF NOTE: ''Obviously, pretty good.'' -- Mike Napoli, when asked how he bounced back from a four-strikeout night Tuesday night.
Tick-borne Lone Star virus identified through new super-fast gene sequencingPublic release date: 2-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kristen Bole kristen.bole@ucsf.edu 415-502-6397 University of California - San Francisco
UCSF scientist says new approach could 'democratize' viral surveillance
The tick-borne Lone Star virus has been conclusively identified as part of a family of other tick-borne viruses called bunyaviruses, which often cause fever, respiratory problems and bleeding, according to new research led by scientists at UC San Francisco (UCSF).
What made the work especially promising, said principal investigator Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, was the speed at which the virus was definitively identified. The team used a new approach to gene sequencing that enabled them to completely reconstruct the virus' previously unknown genome in less than 24 hours significantly faster than conventional sequencing techniques, which can take days to weeks.
The technique, called ultra-rapid deep sequencing, combines deep sequencing an emerging technology that reconstructs an entire DNA sequence from a tiny snippet of DNA with advanced computational techniques and algorithms developed in the laboratories of Chiu and his research collaborators.
Chiu, an assistant professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF and director of the UCSF-Abbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center, reported the results in a paper published in PLOS ONE on April 29. It can be found online at http://www.plosone.org/.
The team found that the Lone Star virus, which is carried by the Lone Star tick, Amblyomma americanum, is related to a group of human pathogens including Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome Virus, which infected hundreds of farmers in China between 2008 and 2010; Bhanja virus, initially found in India; Palma virus, found in Portugal; and Heartland virus, an illness recently reported among farmers in Missouri.
"We did not show that Lone Star virus causes disease in humans," Chiu cautioned, "although the laboratory and sequencing data suggest that this is a distinct possibility."
He said the work may prove to be significant in light of the fact that nearly all emerging diseases discovered over the past two decades have originated in animals. While the causes of many human infectious diseases have been "pretty well characterized," he said, researchers have "only touched the tip of the iceberg" with respect to pathogens that have the potential to pass from animals to humans.
Chiu pointed to a number of serious and unexpected animal-to-human disease transmissions over the last 10 years, including SARS in 2003, the H1N1 influenza in 2009, and the current outbreak of H7N9 avian influenza, which already has resulted in more than 20 deaths in China.
"Nature is continually throwing us curveballs," Chiu said. "We will likely always be faced with the threat of novel outbreak viruses originating in animals or insects. It will be extremely important to identify and characterize those viruses as quickly as possible to get a head start on the development of diagnostic assays for surveillance and drugs, or vaccines for treatment before they have a chance to really spread."
In such circumstances, ultra-rapid deep sequencing will be "extremely useful," he said. "By the time SARS was identified and sequenced using conventional methods, more than a week of time had been lost. That kind of delay could be quite risky in a virus that spreads rapidly in human populations."
Chiu and his team plan to introduce a graphical user interface that will allow small laboratories to analyze and access ultra-rapid, deep-sequencing data through cloud computing over the Internet, even though they do not have access to advanced computers.
"This will mean that any remote laboratory in Asia or Africa where a lot of these recent outbreaks have occurred will be able to use a portable, field-ready benchtop sequencer hooked up to a smartphone or laptop with an Internet connection, to obtain a complete genetic sequence of a novel pathogen within hours," said Chiu. "Our hope is that these efforts will democratize the surveillance and investigation of infectious diseases."
###
The first author of the study is Andrea Swei, PhD, of San Francisco State University. Other co-authors include Brandy J. Russell of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Samia N. Naccache, PhD, Beniwende Kabre and Narayanan Veeraraghavan, PhD, of UCSF; and Mark A. Pilgard and Barbara J.B. Johnson, PhD, of the CDC.
The study was supported by funds from the National Institutes of Health (R56-AI089532 and RO1-HL105704), an Abbott Viral Discovery Award, the QB3 Swartz Foundation Lyme Disease Grant, the National Research Fund for Tick-borne Diseases, a UCSF Microbial Pathogenesis training grant and the CDC.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Tick-borne Lone Star virus identified through new super-fast gene sequencingPublic release date: 2-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kristen Bole kristen.bole@ucsf.edu 415-502-6397 University of California - San Francisco
UCSF scientist says new approach could 'democratize' viral surveillance
The tick-borne Lone Star virus has been conclusively identified as part of a family of other tick-borne viruses called bunyaviruses, which often cause fever, respiratory problems and bleeding, according to new research led by scientists at UC San Francisco (UCSF).
What made the work especially promising, said principal investigator Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, was the speed at which the virus was definitively identified. The team used a new approach to gene sequencing that enabled them to completely reconstruct the virus' previously unknown genome in less than 24 hours significantly faster than conventional sequencing techniques, which can take days to weeks.
The technique, called ultra-rapid deep sequencing, combines deep sequencing an emerging technology that reconstructs an entire DNA sequence from a tiny snippet of DNA with advanced computational techniques and algorithms developed in the laboratories of Chiu and his research collaborators.
Chiu, an assistant professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF and director of the UCSF-Abbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center, reported the results in a paper published in PLOS ONE on April 29. It can be found online at http://www.plosone.org/.
The team found that the Lone Star virus, which is carried by the Lone Star tick, Amblyomma americanum, is related to a group of human pathogens including Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome Virus, which infected hundreds of farmers in China between 2008 and 2010; Bhanja virus, initially found in India; Palma virus, found in Portugal; and Heartland virus, an illness recently reported among farmers in Missouri.
"We did not show that Lone Star virus causes disease in humans," Chiu cautioned, "although the laboratory and sequencing data suggest that this is a distinct possibility."
He said the work may prove to be significant in light of the fact that nearly all emerging diseases discovered over the past two decades have originated in animals. While the causes of many human infectious diseases have been "pretty well characterized," he said, researchers have "only touched the tip of the iceberg" with respect to pathogens that have the potential to pass from animals to humans.
Chiu pointed to a number of serious and unexpected animal-to-human disease transmissions over the last 10 years, including SARS in 2003, the H1N1 influenza in 2009, and the current outbreak of H7N9 avian influenza, which already has resulted in more than 20 deaths in China.
"Nature is continually throwing us curveballs," Chiu said. "We will likely always be faced with the threat of novel outbreak viruses originating in animals or insects. It will be extremely important to identify and characterize those viruses as quickly as possible to get a head start on the development of diagnostic assays for surveillance and drugs, or vaccines for treatment before they have a chance to really spread."
In such circumstances, ultra-rapid deep sequencing will be "extremely useful," he said. "By the time SARS was identified and sequenced using conventional methods, more than a week of time had been lost. That kind of delay could be quite risky in a virus that spreads rapidly in human populations."
Chiu and his team plan to introduce a graphical user interface that will allow small laboratories to analyze and access ultra-rapid, deep-sequencing data through cloud computing over the Internet, even though they do not have access to advanced computers.
"This will mean that any remote laboratory in Asia or Africa where a lot of these recent outbreaks have occurred will be able to use a portable, field-ready benchtop sequencer hooked up to a smartphone or laptop with an Internet connection, to obtain a complete genetic sequence of a novel pathogen within hours," said Chiu. "Our hope is that these efforts will democratize the surveillance and investigation of infectious diseases."
###
The first author of the study is Andrea Swei, PhD, of San Francisco State University. Other co-authors include Brandy J. Russell of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Samia N. Naccache, PhD, Beniwende Kabre and Narayanan Veeraraghavan, PhD, of UCSF; and Mark A. Pilgard and Barbara J.B. Johnson, PhD, of the CDC.
The study was supported by funds from the National Institutes of Health (R56-AI089532 and RO1-HL105704), an Abbott Viral Discovery Award, the QB3 Swartz Foundation Lyme Disease Grant, the National Research Fund for Tick-borne Diseases, a UCSF Microbial Pathogenesis training grant and the CDC.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The Kalashnikov is one of the most well-known and widely-used weapons in history. More than 75 million of the Russian assault rifles have been produced since it entered service in 1949. And while AK's are renowned for their simplicity and durability, the 64 year old line is long overdue for a design update. But can modern materials and production techniques really build a better AK?
Apr. 30, 2013 ? Scientists have used Chandra to make a detailed study of an enormous cloud of hot gas enveloping two large, colliding galaxies. This unusually large reservoir of gas contains as much mass as 10 billion Suns, spans about 300,000 light years, and radiates at a temperature of more than 7 million degrees.
This giant gas cloud, which scientists call a "halo," is located in the system called NGC 6240. Astronomers have long known that NGC 6240 is the site of the merger of two large spiral galaxies similar in size to our own Milky Way. Each galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its center. The black holes are spiraling toward one another, and may eventually merge to form a larger black hole.
Another consequence of the collision between the galaxies is that the gas contained in each individual galaxy has been violently stirred up. This caused a baby boom of new stars that has lasted for at least 200 million years. During this burst of stellar birth, some of the most massive stars raced through their evolution and exploded relatively quickly as supernovas.
The scientists involved with this study argue that this rush of supernova explosions dispersed relatively high amounts of important elements such as oxygen, neon, magnesium, and silicon into the hot gas of the newly combined galaxies. According to the researchers, the data suggest that this enriched gas has slowly expanded into and mixed with cooler gas that was already there.
During the extended baby boom, shorter bursts of star formation have occurred. For example, the most recent burst of star formation lasted for about five million years and occurred about 20 million years ago in Earth's timeframe. However, the authors do not think that the hot gas was produced just by this shorter burst.
What does the future hold for observations of NGC 6240? Most likely the two spiral galaxies will form one young elliptical galaxy over the course of millions of years. It is unclear, however, how much of the hot gas can be retained by this newly formed galaxy, rather than lost to surrounding space. Regardless, the collision offers the opportunity to witness a relatively nearby version of an event that was common in the early Universe when galaxies were much closer together and merged more often.
In this new composite image of NGC 6240, the X-rays from Chandra that reveal the hot gas cloud are colored purple. These data have been combined with optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope, which shows long tidal tails from the merging galaxies, extending to the right and bottom of the image.
A paper describing these new results on NGC 6240 is available online and appeared in the March 10, 2013 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The authors in this study were Emanuele Nardini (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, or CfA, Cambridge, MA and currently at Keele University, UK), Junfeng Wang (CfA and currently at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL), Pepi Fabbiano (CfA), Martin Elvis (CfA), Silvia Pellegrini (University of Bologna, Italy), Guido Risalti (INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Italy and CfA), Margarita Karovska (CfA), and Andreas Zezas (University of Crete, Greece and CfA).
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Chandra X-ray Observatory.
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Journal Reference:
Emanuele Nardini, Junfeng Wang, Giuseppina Fabbiano, Martin Elvis, Silvia Pellegrini, Guido Risaliti, Margarita Karovska, Andreas Zezas. The Exceptional Soft X-ray Halo of the Galaxy Merger NGC 6240. The Astrophysical Journal, March 10, 2013 DOI: http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.5907
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
The day NASA's Fermi dodged a 1.5-ton bulletPublic release date: 1-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Francis Reddy Francis.j.reddy@nasa.gov 301-286-4453 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Maneuvering a satellite to avoid a space collision
NASA scientists don't often learn that their spacecraft is at risk of crashing into another satellite. But when Julie McEnery, the project scientist for NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, checked her email on March 29, 2012, she found herself facing this precise situation.
While Fermi is in fine shape today, continuing its mission to map the highest-energy light in the universe, the story of how it sidestepped a potential disaster offers a glimpse at an underappreciated aspect of managing a space mission: orbital traffic control.
As McEnery worked through her inbox, an automatically generated report arrived from NASA's Robotic Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis (CARA) team based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. On scanning the document, she discovered that Fermi was just one week away from an unusually close encounter with Cosmos 1805, a defunct spy satellite dating back to the Cold War.
The two objects, speeding around Earth at thousands of miles an hour in nearly perpendicular orbits, were expected to miss each other by a mere 700 feet.
"My immediate reaction was, 'Whoa, this is different from anything we've seen before!'" McEnery recalled.
Although the forecast indicated a close call, satellite operators have learned the hard way that they can't be too careful. The uncertainties in predicting spacecraft positions a week into the future can be much larger than the distances forecast for their closest approach.
This was most dramatically demonstrated on Feb. 10, 2009, when a study revealed that Cosmos 2251, a dead Russian communications satellite, would pass about 1,900 feet from the functioning Iridium 33 communications satellite later in the day. At the predicted time of closest approach, all contact with Iridium 33 was lost. Radar revealed clouds of debris traveling along the orbits of both spacecraft, confirming the first known satellite-to-satellite collision.
That crash generated thousands of fragments large enough to be tracked and many smaller pieces that evade detection. Much of the wreckage remains a hazard to operating spacecraft because only about 20 percent of the trackable pieces have reentered the atmosphere.
With a speed relative to Fermi of 27,000 mph, a direct hit by the 3,100-pound Cosmos 1805 would release as much energy as two and a half tons of high explosives, destroying both spacecraft.
Despite the apparent crowding in Earth orbit, there's usually a vast amount of space between individual objects. Close approaches -- also known as conjunctions -- with fragments, rocket bodies and active payloads remain infrequent events. Moreover, few of the potential conjunctions identified a week into the future will actually materialize.
"It's similar to forecasting rain at a specific time and place a week in advance," said Goddard's Eric Stoneking, the attitude control lead engineer for Fermi. "As the date approaches, uncertainties in the prediction decrease and the initial picture may change dramatically."
Twice before, the Fermi team had been alerted to potential conjunctions, and on both occasions the threats evaporated. It was possible the Cosmos 1805 encounter would vanish as well, and the spacecraft's observations could continue without interruption.
But the update on Friday, March 30, indicated otherwise. The satellites would occupy the same point in space within 30 milliseconds of each other.
"It was clear we had to be ready to move Fermi out of the way, and that's when I alerted our Flight Dynamics Team that we were planning a maneuver," McEnery said.
The only way to accomplish this was by firing thrusters designed to ensure that Fermi would never pose a threat to another satellite. Intended for use at the end of Fermi's operating life, the thrusters were designed to take it out of orbit and allow it burn up in the atmosphere.
Because a failure of this system, such as a propellant leak or an explosion, could have ended Fermi's mission prematurely, the thrusters had never been tested, adding a new source of anxiety for McEnery.
"You can't help but be nervous thinking about highly flammable fluids heading down pipes they'd never flowed down before," she said. "But having done this, we now know the system works as designed, and it gives us confidence should we need to maneuver again in the future."
The Goddard CARA team determined how big a push Fermi would need to mitigate the threat. Working with the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, CARA scientists also checked that the projected new orbit wouldn't put Fermi on course for a conjunction with another object. The Flight Operations Team selected possible times for the primary maneuver and, just in case, up to three additional ones.
Over the weekend, the radar and optical sensors of the U.S. Space Surveillance Network continued keeping tabs on Cosmos 1805 and every other artificial object larger than 4 inches across in Earth orbit. Of the 17,000 objects currently tracked, only about 7 percent are active satellites.
Once each day, JSpOC analyzes the updated orbits, looks for possible conjunctions a week or more into the future, and notifies the Goddard CARA team of any events involving NASA's robotic missions. Another group at NASA's Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston performs the same function for all spacecraft carrying astronauts, including the International Space Station.
By Tuesday, April 3, the threat still had not receded and all plans were in place for firing Fermi's thrusters.
Shortly after noon EDT, the spacecraft stopped scanning the sky and oriented itself along its direction of travel. It then parked its solar panels and tucked away its high-gain antenna to protect them from the thruster exhaust.
"The maneuver, which was performed by the spacecraft itself based on procedures we developed a long time ago, was very simple, just firing all thrusters for one second," Stoneking explained. "There was a lot of suspense and tension leading up to it, but once it was over, we just sighed with relief that it all went well."
By 1 p.m., Fermi was back to doing science. A few hours later, the various teams met to evaluate the results of the maneuver and determine if another would be required. When the two spacecraft reached their long-awaited conjunction the following day, they would miss by a comfortable margin of 6 miles, with no further actions needed.
"A huge weight was lifted," McEnery said. "I felt like I'd lost 20 pounds."
Last year, the Goddard CARA team participated in collision-avoidance maneuvers for seven other missions. A month before the Fermi conjunction came to light, Landsat 7 dodged pieces of Fengyun-1C, a Chinese weather satellite deliberately destroyed in 2007 as part of a military test. And in May and October, respectively, NASA's Aura and CALIPSO Earth-observing satellites took steps to avoid fragments from Cosmos 2251.
###
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?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The day NASA's Fermi dodged a 1.5-ton bulletPublic release date: 1-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Francis Reddy Francis.j.reddy@nasa.gov 301-286-4453 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Maneuvering a satellite to avoid a space collision
NASA scientists don't often learn that their spacecraft is at risk of crashing into another satellite. But when Julie McEnery, the project scientist for NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, checked her email on March 29, 2012, she found herself facing this precise situation.
While Fermi is in fine shape today, continuing its mission to map the highest-energy light in the universe, the story of how it sidestepped a potential disaster offers a glimpse at an underappreciated aspect of managing a space mission: orbital traffic control.
As McEnery worked through her inbox, an automatically generated report arrived from NASA's Robotic Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis (CARA) team based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. On scanning the document, she discovered that Fermi was just one week away from an unusually close encounter with Cosmos 1805, a defunct spy satellite dating back to the Cold War.
The two objects, speeding around Earth at thousands of miles an hour in nearly perpendicular orbits, were expected to miss each other by a mere 700 feet.
"My immediate reaction was, 'Whoa, this is different from anything we've seen before!'" McEnery recalled.
Although the forecast indicated a close call, satellite operators have learned the hard way that they can't be too careful. The uncertainties in predicting spacecraft positions a week into the future can be much larger than the distances forecast for their closest approach.
This was most dramatically demonstrated on Feb. 10, 2009, when a study revealed that Cosmos 2251, a dead Russian communications satellite, would pass about 1,900 feet from the functioning Iridium 33 communications satellite later in the day. At the predicted time of closest approach, all contact with Iridium 33 was lost. Radar revealed clouds of debris traveling along the orbits of both spacecraft, confirming the first known satellite-to-satellite collision.
That crash generated thousands of fragments large enough to be tracked and many smaller pieces that evade detection. Much of the wreckage remains a hazard to operating spacecraft because only about 20 percent of the trackable pieces have reentered the atmosphere.
With a speed relative to Fermi of 27,000 mph, a direct hit by the 3,100-pound Cosmos 1805 would release as much energy as two and a half tons of high explosives, destroying both spacecraft.
Despite the apparent crowding in Earth orbit, there's usually a vast amount of space between individual objects. Close approaches -- also known as conjunctions -- with fragments, rocket bodies and active payloads remain infrequent events. Moreover, few of the potential conjunctions identified a week into the future will actually materialize.
"It's similar to forecasting rain at a specific time and place a week in advance," said Goddard's Eric Stoneking, the attitude control lead engineer for Fermi. "As the date approaches, uncertainties in the prediction decrease and the initial picture may change dramatically."
Twice before, the Fermi team had been alerted to potential conjunctions, and on both occasions the threats evaporated. It was possible the Cosmos 1805 encounter would vanish as well, and the spacecraft's observations could continue without interruption.
But the update on Friday, March 30, indicated otherwise. The satellites would occupy the same point in space within 30 milliseconds of each other.
"It was clear we had to be ready to move Fermi out of the way, and that's when I alerted our Flight Dynamics Team that we were planning a maneuver," McEnery said.
The only way to accomplish this was by firing thrusters designed to ensure that Fermi would never pose a threat to another satellite. Intended for use at the end of Fermi's operating life, the thrusters were designed to take it out of orbit and allow it burn up in the atmosphere.
Because a failure of this system, such as a propellant leak or an explosion, could have ended Fermi's mission prematurely, the thrusters had never been tested, adding a new source of anxiety for McEnery.
"You can't help but be nervous thinking about highly flammable fluids heading down pipes they'd never flowed down before," she said. "But having done this, we now know the system works as designed, and it gives us confidence should we need to maneuver again in the future."
The Goddard CARA team determined how big a push Fermi would need to mitigate the threat. Working with the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, CARA scientists also checked that the projected new orbit wouldn't put Fermi on course for a conjunction with another object. The Flight Operations Team selected possible times for the primary maneuver and, just in case, up to three additional ones.
Over the weekend, the radar and optical sensors of the U.S. Space Surveillance Network continued keeping tabs on Cosmos 1805 and every other artificial object larger than 4 inches across in Earth orbit. Of the 17,000 objects currently tracked, only about 7 percent are active satellites.
Once each day, JSpOC analyzes the updated orbits, looks for possible conjunctions a week or more into the future, and notifies the Goddard CARA team of any events involving NASA's robotic missions. Another group at NASA's Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston performs the same function for all spacecraft carrying astronauts, including the International Space Station.
By Tuesday, April 3, the threat still had not receded and all plans were in place for firing Fermi's thrusters.
Shortly after noon EDT, the spacecraft stopped scanning the sky and oriented itself along its direction of travel. It then parked its solar panels and tucked away its high-gain antenna to protect them from the thruster exhaust.
"The maneuver, which was performed by the spacecraft itself based on procedures we developed a long time ago, was very simple, just firing all thrusters for one second," Stoneking explained. "There was a lot of suspense and tension leading up to it, but once it was over, we just sighed with relief that it all went well."
By 1 p.m., Fermi was back to doing science. A few hours later, the various teams met to evaluate the results of the maneuver and determine if another would be required. When the two spacecraft reached their long-awaited conjunction the following day, they would miss by a comfortable margin of 6 miles, with no further actions needed.
"A huge weight was lifted," McEnery said. "I felt like I'd lost 20 pounds."
Last year, the Goddard CARA team participated in collision-avoidance maneuvers for seven other missions. A month before the Fermi conjunction came to light, Landsat 7 dodged pieces of Fengyun-1C, a Chinese weather satellite deliberately destroyed in 2007 as part of a military test. And in May and October, respectively, NASA's Aura and CALIPSO Earth-observing satellites took steps to avoid fragments from Cosmos 2251.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Health Affairs examines worldwide pursuit of the 'Triple Aim' in April 2013 issuePublic release date: 30-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sue Ducat sducat@projecthope.org 301-841-9962 Health Affairs
Practices from other countries hold lessons for the United States
Bethesda, MD -- In its April issue, Health Affairs examines how all high-income countries are struggling to achieve the so-called "Triple Aim" - better health and better health care at lower cost. The articles in this issue find that the United States and other high-income countries have much to learn with the "trade" in strategies and tactics likely to flow both ways.
Support for the April issue was made possible by The Commonwealth Fund, Britain's Nuffield Trust, and the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London.
DRUG PAYMENT AND PRICING--HOW DO U.S. PRACTICES COMPARE WITH OTHER COUNTRIES?
A featured study by Panos Kanavos of the London School of Economics and Political Science and coauthors compared prescription drug prices among selected countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2005, 2007, and 2010. Depending on how prices were adjusted for the volume of drugs consumed in the various countries, drug prices in the United States were between 5 percent and nearly 200 percent higher than in the other nations studied. A key contributing factor is that the United States takes up use of new and more expensive prescription drugs faster than other countries. The authors recommend that the United States institute new procedures that would require pharmaceutical manufacturers to provide more evidence about the value of new drugs in relation to the cost before use of such drugs is reimbursed.
In a related article, Joshua Cohen of the Center for the Study of Drug Development at Tufts University and coauthors compared regulatory and reimbursement decisions about cancer drugs approved between 2000 and 2011 in the United States and four European countries. They found that in Europe, the evidence-based approach used by the countries' health authorities affords lower prices for patients and payers when medications are considered cost-effective, although fewer of the new drugs were available to patients. In contrast, although US consumers had access to more oncology drugs, there is no systematic approach in the United States to evaluating these drugs' cost-effectiveness. The lack of any such approach makes it very difficult for the United States to control escalating drug costs, drive improvements in health outcomes, and reduce inequities in access to care among those who can and can't pay, the authors write.
Other articles comparing payment and pricing practices for prescription drugs and medical devices include the following:
International Best Practices For Negotiating 'Reimbursement Contracts' With Price Rebates From Pharmaceutical Companies, Steven Morgan at the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, University of British Columbia, and coauthors
Evolving Reimbursement And Pricing Policies For Devices In Europe And The United States Should Encourage Greater Value, Corinna Sorenson at the London School of Economics and Political Science and coauthors
ADDITIONAL LESSONS FOR THE UNITED STATES, INCLUDING PREVENTING A "TRIPLE FAIL"
Geraint Lewis, chief data officer of England's National Health Service, and coauthors maintain that when countries implement Triple Aim goals across a country's population, it is also critical to identify certain subgroups as at risk of "triple failures"--instances when all three goals of better health, better care, and lower cost are not met. By stratifying populations according to risk and anticipated response to an intervention, the authors argue, health systems could more effectively put in place measures to forestall such failures. They describe in their article how to plan and operationalize such approaches.
LAUNCHING INSURANCE EXCHANGES: OTHER COUNTRIES' EXPERIENCES
As the United States prepares for the launch of new health insurance exchanges, Ewout van Ginneken of the Berlin University of Technology in Germany and coauthors evaluate similar insurance market reforms in Switzerland (1996) and the Netherlands (2006) and offer five specific recommendations for the US exchanges. Both countries created managed competition in their health insurance markets and successfully addressed the multiple unforeseen issues arising during the implementation period. The lessons for the United States include the need to update risk-adjustment mechanisms and to address enrollment barriers, among others.
HOSPITAL PAYMENT AND GOVERNANCE ABROAD
A study by Wilm Quentin of Berlin University of Technology and co-authors analyzed hospital payment systems in five European countries (England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden) and compared them to those in the United States. Similar to the US Medicare program, these European hospital payment systems are also based on diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) and prospective payment. However, European countries have substantially altered, and arguably improved upon, the original US formula that they adopted. The authors identify a variety of payment design options from Europe and suggest that these potential innovations could be used to reform DRG-based hospital payments in the United States.
Another study comparing hospitals, by Ashish Jha and Arnold Epstein of Harvard School of Public Health, surveyed the chairs of British hospitals, and compared the results to their 2010 study of US hospital board chairs. They found that English board chairs had more expertise in quality-of-care issues and spent a greater proportion of their time on quality of care than their US counterparts. However, they also found that like their American counterparts, many English board chairs overestimated the quality performance of their hospitals, suggesting that there is room for improving board expertise in both countries.
###
ABOUT HEALTH AFFAIRSHealth Affairs is the leading journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published by Project HOPE, the peer-reviewed journal appears each month in print, with additional Web First papers published periodically at http://www.healthaffairs.org. The full text of each Health Affairs Web First paper is available free of charge to all website visitors for a two-week period following posting, after which it switches to pay-per-view for nonsubscribers. Web First papers are supported in part by a grant from The Commonwealth Fund. You can also find the journal on Facebook and Twitter. Read daily perspectives on Health Affairs Blog. Download our podcasts, including monthly Narrative Matters essays, on iTunes. Tap into Health Affairs content with the new iPad app.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Health Affairs examines worldwide pursuit of the 'Triple Aim' in April 2013 issuePublic release date: 30-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sue Ducat sducat@projecthope.org 301-841-9962 Health Affairs
Practices from other countries hold lessons for the United States
Bethesda, MD -- In its April issue, Health Affairs examines how all high-income countries are struggling to achieve the so-called "Triple Aim" - better health and better health care at lower cost. The articles in this issue find that the United States and other high-income countries have much to learn with the "trade" in strategies and tactics likely to flow both ways.
Support for the April issue was made possible by The Commonwealth Fund, Britain's Nuffield Trust, and the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London.
DRUG PAYMENT AND PRICING--HOW DO U.S. PRACTICES COMPARE WITH OTHER COUNTRIES?
A featured study by Panos Kanavos of the London School of Economics and Political Science and coauthors compared prescription drug prices among selected countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2005, 2007, and 2010. Depending on how prices were adjusted for the volume of drugs consumed in the various countries, drug prices in the United States were between 5 percent and nearly 200 percent higher than in the other nations studied. A key contributing factor is that the United States takes up use of new and more expensive prescription drugs faster than other countries. The authors recommend that the United States institute new procedures that would require pharmaceutical manufacturers to provide more evidence about the value of new drugs in relation to the cost before use of such drugs is reimbursed.
In a related article, Joshua Cohen of the Center for the Study of Drug Development at Tufts University and coauthors compared regulatory and reimbursement decisions about cancer drugs approved between 2000 and 2011 in the United States and four European countries. They found that in Europe, the evidence-based approach used by the countries' health authorities affords lower prices for patients and payers when medications are considered cost-effective, although fewer of the new drugs were available to patients. In contrast, although US consumers had access to more oncology drugs, there is no systematic approach in the United States to evaluating these drugs' cost-effectiveness. The lack of any such approach makes it very difficult for the United States to control escalating drug costs, drive improvements in health outcomes, and reduce inequities in access to care among those who can and can't pay, the authors write.
Other articles comparing payment and pricing practices for prescription drugs and medical devices include the following:
International Best Practices For Negotiating 'Reimbursement Contracts' With Price Rebates From Pharmaceutical Companies, Steven Morgan at the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, University of British Columbia, and coauthors
Evolving Reimbursement And Pricing Policies For Devices In Europe And The United States Should Encourage Greater Value, Corinna Sorenson at the London School of Economics and Political Science and coauthors
ADDITIONAL LESSONS FOR THE UNITED STATES, INCLUDING PREVENTING A "TRIPLE FAIL"
Geraint Lewis, chief data officer of England's National Health Service, and coauthors maintain that when countries implement Triple Aim goals across a country's population, it is also critical to identify certain subgroups as at risk of "triple failures"--instances when all three goals of better health, better care, and lower cost are not met. By stratifying populations according to risk and anticipated response to an intervention, the authors argue, health systems could more effectively put in place measures to forestall such failures. They describe in their article how to plan and operationalize such approaches.
LAUNCHING INSURANCE EXCHANGES: OTHER COUNTRIES' EXPERIENCES
As the United States prepares for the launch of new health insurance exchanges, Ewout van Ginneken of the Berlin University of Technology in Germany and coauthors evaluate similar insurance market reforms in Switzerland (1996) and the Netherlands (2006) and offer five specific recommendations for the US exchanges. Both countries created managed competition in their health insurance markets and successfully addressed the multiple unforeseen issues arising during the implementation period. The lessons for the United States include the need to update risk-adjustment mechanisms and to address enrollment barriers, among others.
HOSPITAL PAYMENT AND GOVERNANCE ABROAD
A study by Wilm Quentin of Berlin University of Technology and co-authors analyzed hospital payment systems in five European countries (England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden) and compared them to those in the United States. Similar to the US Medicare program, these European hospital payment systems are also based on diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) and prospective payment. However, European countries have substantially altered, and arguably improved upon, the original US formula that they adopted. The authors identify a variety of payment design options from Europe and suggest that these potential innovations could be used to reform DRG-based hospital payments in the United States.
Another study comparing hospitals, by Ashish Jha and Arnold Epstein of Harvard School of Public Health, surveyed the chairs of British hospitals, and compared the results to their 2010 study of US hospital board chairs. They found that English board chairs had more expertise in quality-of-care issues and spent a greater proportion of their time on quality of care than their US counterparts. However, they also found that like their American counterparts, many English board chairs overestimated the quality performance of their hospitals, suggesting that there is room for improving board expertise in both countries.
###
ABOUT HEALTH AFFAIRSHealth Affairs is the leading journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published by Project HOPE, the peer-reviewed journal appears each month in print, with additional Web First papers published periodically at http://www.healthaffairs.org. The full text of each Health Affairs Web First paper is available free of charge to all website visitors for a two-week period following posting, after which it switches to pay-per-view for nonsubscribers. Web First papers are supported in part by a grant from The Commonwealth Fund. You can also find the journal on Facebook and Twitter. Read daily perspectives on Health Affairs Blog. Download our podcasts, including monthly Narrative Matters essays, on iTunes. Tap into Health Affairs content with the new iPad app.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
We're closing the month out on a solid note: this week's giveaway involves a fourth-generation 32GB iPad. It's made possible by AnchorFree, which is celebrating its Hotspot Shield app for iOS. The VPN client aims to keep your information secure, ensure that your identity is safe and gives you the ability to access blocked sites. If iOS isn't your thing, it's also available on Android, Mac and PC. So take a few seconds and turn in your entry for a chance to win, and good luck!
Note: Please enter using the widget below, as comments are no longer valid methods of entry. The widget only requires your name and email address so we know how to get in touch with you if you win (your information is not given out to third parties), but you will have an option to receive an additional entry by following us on Twitter if you so desire.
'You don't feel like you're watching something from a different era,' he tells MTV News of Jay-Z's hip-hop-infused soundtrack. By Todd Gilchrist, with reporting by Josh Horowitz
There are seven remaining pairs on "Dancing With the Stars" and only three more elimination nights before the finals. So, barring any surprise double eliminations, there will be four couples -- not the traditional three -- competing in the finale on May 20.
ABC
?It?s good for that fourth couple who?ll get paid an extra couple of bucks,? pro Val Chmerkovskiy shrugged to reporters in Monday night?s post-show press line.
Derek Hough thinks it?s a good idea too.
"Honestly, it means more dances for the finals," the three-time mirror-ball champion said. ?It?s more entertainment for the viewers at home, and that?s what it?s all about.?
Hough has said in the past that it?s best to come in either fourth or first, since exiting right after the semifinals means a dancer doesn?t have to come up with two more routines for a finale that he or she may or may not win.
?I think differently about that now,? he said. ?When I said that, I might have been thinking I didn?t want to do all that hard work. But I?m of the frame of mind that it?s an absolute pleasure and joy to be able to do any dance number on the show -- every time, even for results shows.?
Recap: 'Dancing With the Stars' judges take the ballroom to the bathroom
While anything can happen between now and the finals, it seems likely that three of the four finalists will be the competition's consistently high-scoring duos: Kellie Pickler and Hough, Zendaya and Chmerkovskiy, and Jacoby Jones and Karina Smirnoff. The fourth slot is up for grabs.
But the only sure thing right now is that Hough and Pickler won?t be going home on Tuesday night. They scored enough points on Monday to earn immunity.
Related:? Andy on how he's ranked on 'Dancing': 'It's not fair'
But while Hough and Pickler are safe for now, the pro feels that writing off low-scorer Andy Dick before the end just might be a mistake, given the show?s passionate fan base.
?I hope the judges did Andy a favor with their (strong) comments,? Hough offered. ?If you feel that (your favorite) is being picked on, then you?re going to say to yourself, ?I?m going to vote for him!??
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Public release date: 2-May-2013
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