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Spear-throwing tools called atlatls allow humans to launch projectiles over great distances, but Neanderthals apparently never used them – and an experiment involving a 9-metre-tall platform may explain why

Spear-throwing tools called atlatls allow humans to launch projectiles over great distances, but Neanderthals apparently never used them – and an experiment involving a 9-metre-tall platform may explain why

3 min read

Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Dr. Rainee Simons (right) and Dr. Félix Miranda work together to create technology supporting heart health at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.Credit: NASA

Prioritizing health is important on Earth, and it’s even more important in space. Exploring beyond the Earth’s surface exposes humans to conditions that can impact blood pressure, bone density, immune health, and much more. With this in mind, two NASA inventors joined forces 20 years ago to create a way to someday monitor astronaut heart health on long-duration spaceflight missions. This technology is now being used to monitor the health of patients with heart failure on Earth through a commercial product that is slated to launch in late 2024.

NASA inventors Dr. Rainee Simons, senior microwave communications engineer, and Dr. Félix Miranda, deputy chief of the Communications and Intelligent Systems Division, applied their expertise in radio frequency integrated circuits and antennas to create a miniature implantable sensor system to keep track of astronaut health in space. The technology, which was created at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland with seed funds from the agency’s Technology Transfer Office, consists of a small bio-implanted sensor that can transmit a person’s health status from a sensor to a handheld device. The sensor is battery-less and wireless.

“You’re able to insert the sensor and bring it up to the heart or the aorta like a stent – the same process as in a stent implant,” Simons said. “No major surgery is needed for implantation, and operating the external handheld device, by the patient, is simple and easy.”

After Glenn patented the invention, Dr. Anthony Nunez, a heart surgeon, and Harry Rowland, a mechanical engineer, licensed the technology and founded a digital health medical technology company in 2007 called Endotronix, now an Edwards Lifesciences company. The company focuses on enabling proactive heart failure management with data-driven patient-to-physician solutions that detect dangers, based on the Glenn technology. The Endotronix primary monitoring system is called the Cordella Pulmonary Artery (PA) Sensor System. Dr. Nunez became aware of the technology while reading a technical journal that featured the concept, and he saw parallels that could be used in the medical technology industry.

The concept has proven to be an aid for heart failure management through several clinical trials, and patients have experienced improvements in their quality of life. Based on the outcome of Endotronix’s clinical testing to demonstrate safety and effectiveness, in June 2024 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted premarket approval to the Cordella PA Sensor System. The system is meant to help clinicians remotely assess, treat, and manage heart failure in patients at home with the goal of reducing hospitalizations.

“If you look at the statistics of how many people have congestive heart failure, high blood pressure… it’s a lot of people,” Miranda said. “To have the medical community saying we have a device that started from NASA’s intellectual property – and it could help people worldwide to be healthy, to enjoy life, to go about their business – is highly gratifying, and it’s very consistent with NASA’s mission to do work for the benefit of all.”

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Millions of years ago, our ancestors lost a gene for producing vitamin C and got a taste for citrus. Since then, we've cultivated the tangy fruits into global staples like sweet oranges and sour lemons

Millions of years ago, our ancestors lost a gene for producing vitamin C and got a taste for citrus. Since then, we've cultivated the tangy fruits into global staples like sweet oranges and sour lemons

2 min read

Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) The controlled descent of the Mars Curiosity rover included the use of propulsion rockets pointing to the surface to allow a gentle landing. The engine, shown firing in this illustration of Perseverance and the sky crane landing system relied on a pyrovalve that released the rocket fuel.Credit: NASA /JPL-Caltech

The Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers continue to provide a wealth of information about the Red Planet. This was made possible in part by the sky crane landing systems that safely lowered them to the planet’s surface. Their successful descent, managed by eight powerful engines, depended on one small part – a valve. 

The engines produced about 750 pounds of thrust each, so they required more fuel than a conventional valve could deliver, said Carl Guernsey, propulsion subsystem chief engineer for the Mars Sample Laboratory Mission. 

“With the engines pointing down, we throttle up and increase the thrust, so we slow down,” said Guernsey. “At a certain altitude above the surface, you hold at a constant velocity to collect more sensor data, and then proceed with the rest of the descent.”  

With only seconds for sensor data to identify the landing area and direct any last-minute diversion maneuvers, landing requires fuel available at the right time. To build the valve to help accomplish this task, NASA turned to a company that has provided the space program with reliable gas regulators since the 1950s. Through a series of mergers, by 2021, the original company, called Conax Florida, became part of Eaton based in Orchard Park, New York.  

Working under contract with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the company developed a new one-time-use pyrovalve to sit between the hydrazine fuel tank and engines. The zero-leak valve was the largest ever made of its type at the time, at three-fourths of an inch. 

This one-time-use pyrovalve sat between the hydrazine fuel tank and the controlled-descent engines on the sky crane for the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers. The zero-leak valve developed by Eaton also ensured no fuel was lost on the long flight to Mars.Credit: Eaton Corp.

The Y-shaped pipe with a pair of leak-proof solid metal barriers prevented propellant from flowing. The valve contains a pyrotechnic charge that activates a piston called a flying ram, which shears off the barriers, allowing fuel to flow. But a problem arose during flight qualification testing. Sometimes the ram didn’t stay wedged in place at the bottom, posing a blockage risk. 

The solution the team came up with had never been tried before – magnets at the bottom of the valve. But the successful Perseverance landing in 2021 proved it works. The same valve is included in the Perseverance rover and now enables commercial rocket-stage separation in space. 

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Details Last Updated Oct 11, 2024 Related Terms

• Technology Transfer & Spinoffs
• Spinoffs
• Technology Transfer

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A chemical produced by gut bacteria could be the basis for a non-invasive test for endometriosis – and mouse experiments suggest it might also help treat the condition

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“My mom had to leave school after 9th grade to support her family, but she always emphasized the importance of education. And with a lot of sacrifices, got us an encyclopedia in Spanish, ‘Enciclopedia de Las Ciencias’. By getting that encyclopedia for us, without knowing it, my mom was my first mentor because she introduced me to science. So that’s what helped fall in love with physics.

“I was the first of many things. I was the only one in my whole class that decided to study physics at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. I was the first master student to do a thesis related to atmospheric physics. There was no atmospheric sciences and meteorology in Puerto Rico, I saw the need and potential, so I started the first student chapter of the American Meteorological Society in Puerto Rico. I was the first one to get a PhD in atmospheric physics from the program and there have been so many firsts since then. 

“I’m leading by example. I don’t want the people who look like me to experience what I experienced because I was alone many times. And there’s a saying that says you cannot be what you can’t see.

“So, I’m not just doing science. I’m doing Science with Purpose, and my purpose is to be the voice for those who are underrepresented in science, open doors and opportunities and help them understand that they have a space in science.”

– Dr. Yaíta Luna-Cruz, Program Executive, Earth Science Division, NASA Headquarters

Image Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber
Interviewer: NASA/Jessica Salani

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When a supermassive black hole consumes a star, it doesn’t just swallow it whole. It shreds the star, ripping it apart bit by bit before consuming the remains. It’s a messy process known as a tidal disruption event (TDE). Astronomers occasionally catch a glimpse of TDEs, and one recent one has helped solve a mystery about a type of transient X-ray source.

Known as quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs), they are soft X-rays that emanate from the centers of galaxies every few hours or a few weeks. QPEs are rare, so they are difficult to study, and we aren’t sure what causes them. One idea is that they are caused by a large star or stellar black hole orbiting the supermassive black hole in such a way that its orbit intersects with the accretion disk of the supermassive black hole. Each time the smaller object passes through the disk, it triggers superheated plasma to release X-rays. We’ve seen a similar effect with blazars, for example.

Given the short periodicity of QPEs the companion object would need to orbit the black hole very closely, just on the edge of a stable orbit distance. And when it starts intersecting with accretion disk material, its orbit will decay on a short cosmic timescale. This would explain why QPEs are so rare. But to prove this model, astronomers would need to observe this happening in real time, which is what a team of astronomers has recently done. The results will be published in Nature later this month.

AT2019qiz seen in X-ray and optical light. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Queen’s Univ. Belfast/M. Nicholl et al.; Optical/IR: PanSTARRS, NSF/Legacy Survey/SDSS

The story begins with an observation by the Zwicky Transient Facility back in 2019. The ZTF captured an optical flare that had all the markings of a tidal disruption event. It came to be known as TDE AT2019qiz. According to black hole models, when a star is ripped apart, much of the material forms an accretion disk around the black hole within a few years. This would make for perfect QPE conditions if there was a close companion object. So the team aimed the Chandra X-ray Observatory at AT2019qiz occasionally, hoping to capture a quasi-periodic eruption. Sure enough, in 2023, the team started to observe X-ray flashes erupting about every 48 hours. Observations from the Swift and AstroSAT telescopes further confirmed the result.

It isn’t known whether the companion is a star or small black hole, and the team would like to capture more QPEs occurring after known tidal disruption events, but this initial result is pretty clear.

Reference: Nicholl, M., et al. “Quasi-periodic X-ray eruptions years after a nearby tidal disruption event.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.02181 (2024).

The post A Black Hole has Destroyed a Star, and Used the Wreckage to Pummel Another Star appeared first on Universe Today.