Dead satellite tumbles to Earth ? but where?

Scientists were trying to establish how and where a defunct research satellite returned to the Earth Sunday, after warning that some parts might survive re-entry and crash at up to 280 mph.

There was no immediate solid evidence to determine above which continent or country the ROSAT scientific research satellite entered the atmosphere, said Andreas Schuetz, spokesman for the German Aerospace Center.

Most parts of the minivan-sized German satellite were expected to burn up, but up to 30 fragments weighing a total of 1.87 tons could have hit the planet.

Citing officials, Space.com reported that ROSAT slammed into Earth's atmosphere sometime between 9:45 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. ET on Saturday.

Scientists were no longer able to communicate with the dead satellite and it must have traveled about 12,500 miles in the final 30 minutes before entering the atmosphere, Schuetz said.

Video: Satellite to fall to earth this weekend (on this page)

Schuetz said it could take days to determine exactly where pieces of the satellite had fallen, but that the agency had not received any reports that it had hit any populated areas.

"We have no such information," he said Sunday.

Based on ROSAT's orbital path, these fragments could be scattered along a swath of the planet about 50 miles wide, German aerospace officials have said.

Scientists said hours before the re-entry into the atmosphere that the satellite was not expected to hit over Europe, Africa or Australia. According to a precalculated path it could have been above Asia, possibly China, at the time of its re-entry, but Schuetz said he could not confirm that.

The 2.69-ton scientific ROSAT satellite was launched in 1990 to study X-ray radiation from stars, comets, supernovas, nebulas and black holes, among other things. The satellite was originally designed for an 18-month mission, but it far outlived its projected lifespan. [Photos of Doomed ROSAT Satellite]

Heat-resistant mirror
It retired in 1999 after performing the first all-sky survey of X-ray sources with an imaging telescope.

The largest single fragment of ROSAT that could hit into the earth is the telescope's heat-resistant mirror.

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During its mission, the satellite orbited about 370 miles above the Earth's surface, but since its decommissioning it has lost altitude, circling at a distance of only 205 miles above ground in June for example, the agency said.

Even in the last days, the satellite still circled the planet every 90 minutes, making it hard to predict where on Earth it would eventually come down.

Mission controllers initially estimated that ROSAT could fall to Earth in November, but increased solar activity caused the satellite's orbit to decay faster than originally expected. As the sun's activity ramps up, it heats up and expands the atmosphere, which creates more drag on satellites in orbit.

'Catch them'
ROSAT's fall from space shone a spotlight on the growing problem of debris in space.

"One option is we want to be able to catch uncontrolled satellites in the future," Jan Woerner, head of the executive board of the German Aerospace Center, told Space.com. "We're working on such a mission to catch them, depending on their state, and have a controlled re-entry or send them to a graveyard, in order to prevent this situation in the future."

A dead NASA satellite fell into the southern Pacific Ocean last month, causing no damage, despite fears it would hit a populated area and cause damage or kill people.

Video: Dead satellite falls in flaming pieces (on this page)

Experts believe about two dozen metal pieces from the bus-sized satellite fell over a 500-mile span.

The German space agency puts the odds of somebody somewhere on Earth being hurt by its satellite at one in 2,000 ? a slightly higher level of risk than was calculated for the NASA satellite. But any one individual's odds of being struck are one in 14 trillion, given there are 7 billion people on the planet.

The Associated Press and Space.com's Denise Chow contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44992707/ns/technology_and_science-space/

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AGING AMERICA: Long-term care costs can bankrupt an average family, yet few carry insurance (Star Tribune)

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Researchers ID genetic mutation associated with high risk of age-related macular degeneration

Researchers ID genetic mutation associated with high risk of age-related macular degeneration

Monday, October 24, 2011

Age- related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of severe visual loss among the elderly. Researchers had previously identified several relatively common genetic variants which together predict a person's increased risk for AMD, but a significant number of persons without the disease also have these variants. Now, for the first time, investigators have been able to clearly show a specific rare mutation called CFH R1210C that predicts a very high risk of disease and is extremely uncommon among individuals who do not have the disease. Although it is a rare variant, accounting for about 1% of the total cases, it is highly related to familial disease and earlier age of onset. This research is published online and in an upcoming print edition of Nature Genetics. The paper is a collaborative effort between investigators from Tufts Medical Center, Tufts University School of Medicine and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

"Our paper shows that there is a genetic variant that confers high risk of the development of AMD; this finding not only clearly links CFH gene dysfunction to disease, but also might help to identify people who need to be screened more closely," said first author, Soumya Raychaudhuri, MD, PhD, a researcher in the Divisions of Genetics and Rheumatology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School.

Prior to this publication, it was known that genetic variation within the CFH gene influenced risk of AMD in individuals. In this study, researchers conducted sequencing and genotyping of CFH in 2,423 AMD cases and 1,122 controls in the laboratory of senior author Johanna M. Seddon, MD, ScM, Professor of Ophthalmology at Tufts University School of Medicine and Director of the Ophthalmic Epidemiology and Genetics Service at Tufts Medical Center. They identified a rare, high-risk mutation resulting in an arginine to cysteine substitution in the CFH protein. This mutation is associated with loss of function of the CFH protein and its discovery suggests that loss of CFH function can drive AMD risk. It was associated with advanced AMD with visual loss and many of the patients also had numerous drusen, which are the early hallmarks of AMD.

"The discovery of this rare but penetrant variant strongly associated with disease also points the way to developing new and effective treatments for high risk individuals," said Seddon.

Collaborators in this research included investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital and Johns Hopkins University.

###

Brigham and Women's Hospital: http://www.brighamandwomens.org

Thanks to Brigham and Women's Hospital for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/114552/Researchers_ID_genetic_mutation_associated_with_high_risk_of_age_related_macular_degeneration

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Warners wants Bradley Cooper for "U.N.C.L.E." (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? Warner Bros. and Bradley Cooper are in talks for the actor to star in the studio's big screen version of "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," TheWrap has confirmed.

Steven Soderbergh is directing the movie, based on the 1960s television series

Cooper is in talks to play Napolean Solo, the role that Robert Vaughn played on TV.

Next, the studio has to find Solo's crime-fighting partner in the United Network Command for Law Enforcement. David McCallum originated that role.

The movie, like the television show, will be set in the 1960s.

Cooper, who starred in Warner's "Hangover" movies, and is now filming the Weinstein Company's "The Silver Linings Playbook," which David O. Russell is directing. He's then scheduled to play Alex Proyas in the Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures "Paradise Lost."

Variety first reported the news.

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UN says North Korea needs food aid, not politics (AP)

PYONGYANG, North Korea ? Wealthier countries need to put aside politics to help millions of North Koreans going hungry from food shortages, the U.N.' top relief official said Friday, renewing an appeal for assistance that has largely gone unmet.

Speaking at the end of a five-day visit to North Korea, Valerie Amos, a U.N. undersecretary-general, said millions of North Koreans, particularly children, mothers and pregnant women, need help. The millions of hungry, she said, is borne out by UN data and by what she learned from visits to farms, hospitals and orphanages, as well as from officials.

People's diets, she said, consist of rice, maize, cabbage, little else and no protein or nutrient rich foods.

While she acknowledged concerns about whether the authoritarian government diverts food aid or underfunds agriculture, Amos urged donor countries to put the needs of North Koreans ahead of other considerations.

"This is about helping the people who are most in need. It's not about saying that this country has made a choice about spending its resources in one way rather than another. We don't make those judgments in other countries, on humanitarian grounds. There's no reason to begin to do it in" North Korea, Amos told The Associated Press before leaving Pyongyang.

Hers is the latest appeal to meet a U.N. request in April for $218 million in emergency aid. Only a third has been met as key donors like the United States largely shun giving over North Korea's provocative behavior and persisting questions about whether North Korea is withholding food from its public.

Washington approved $900,000 in emergency flood aid in August but has held back on approving food aid in part because Pyongyang is funding a nuclear program, reneging on nuclear disarmament pledges. Key U.S. ally South Korea, which earlier in the decade provided large amounts of food aid, stopped giving after its conservative president, Lee Myung-back, took office in 2008.

U.N. agencies and humanitarian groups continue to have trouble monitoring how their aid is distributed ? issues Amos said she raised with North Korean officials. She said she also discussed the "chronic poverty and underdevelopment" she saw.

Still, she said, donors should not doubt the evident need for food aid. "Donors need to trust the information that they're being given. They need to trust what they're being told about the situation here," Amos said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/un/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111021/ap_on_re_as/as_nkorea_hunger

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