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… and the flag was still there: “
This is very, very cool: The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, currently orbiting the Moon just 50 km off the surface, has taken more shots of the Apollo 17 landing site… and has seen the actual U.S. flag!
Behold (and salute):
[Click to boldly embiggen.]
Well, lookit that! It’s fuzzy and small and hard to be sure it’s the flag in the picture, but there it is. It does match maps made of the Apollo 17 landing site, so it’s definitely the flagpole we’re seeing there.
Cooool.
Compare this picture to that taken by the 16mm movie camera on the Ascent Module right after Apollo 17 lifted off the Moon; you can see many of the same features. I spent a minute looking for the rover in the LRO picture, then remembered that the astronauts moved it well off to one side, about 100 meters, before they left the Moon so that the video camera on board could record their ascent (it was remotely controlled from Earth by an operator named Ed Fendell, who had tried to film the launch of Apollo 15’s and 16’s Ascent Module but missed; with Apollos 15 and 16 technical issues prevented the ascent from being filmed, but with 17 he made it, and that’s the movie you always see in documentaries). However, you can see it in this larger overview from LRO:
[Again, click to make a giant leap.]
Incredible. The LRO page on this has more details, including comparisons of the images from LRO to ones taken in situ from Apollo 17. Remember too that these LRO images have a resolution of 50 cm (18 inches) per pixel!
Wow. Wowee wow wow.
Back to the flag, there’s a curious thing about it. The flag itself was nylon, and that tends to get brittle when exposed to ultraviolet light — which is relentless and plentiful on the airless Moon (the thermal pounding it’s taken between day and night can’t help either). I’ve often wondered what we’ll find when we go back to the Apollo landing sites; I half-expect to see red, white, and blue powder off to one side of the flagpole, and no actual flag left on the pole. This picture, as frakkin’ amazing as it is, is still just barely too low resolution to be able to say for sure, I think. The shadow is only a pixel or so in size and so it’s hard to say what’s what.
Still, Holy Haleakala. Apollo 17’s flag. I wonder what Gene Cernan and Jack Schmidt thought when they saw this picture. And I wonder when we’ll go back.
Tip o’ the spacesuit visor to Guillermo Abramson. [Edited to add: Apparently I am late to this game. While catching up on other blogs just now, I saw that both Emily Lakdawalla and Nancy Atkinson already wrote about this!]
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(Via Bad Astronomy.)
Patients Waiting for Lung Transplants May Soon Breathe a Sigh of Relief | 80beats: “
Emphysema and cystic fibrosis patients who need new lungs are faced with a life-threatening problem: more than 80 percent of donated lungs can’t be used—they’re inflamed and barely functional [Scientific American]. Transplanted lungs also fail at a much higher rate than other transplanted organs, as they’re more likely to be rejected by the recipient’s body. But a new procedure that makes use of gene therapy may soon double or triple the supply of undamaged donated lungs, and may also improve their function once transplanted.
In both pre- and post-transplant lungs, the problem is inflammation caused by insufficient amounts of an immune molecule called IL-10. Donated lungs are immediately chilled on ice, which destroys any IL-10 that may remain in the lungs, allowing substantial damage to occur before the organ can be implanted. And a lack of the molecule after transplantation increases the likelihood that inflammation will damage the organ and induce rejection [Los Angeles Times].
To get around these problems, the researchers first built a domed chamber where pig lungs were kept at body temperature with a steady flow of oxygen and nutrients moving through them. That arrangement alone prevented substantial damage to the lungs. Next, in the gene therapy stage, the researchers used a harmless virus to bring a gene that produces IL-10 into the lung cells.
Lead researcher Shaf Keshavjee explains that the lungs that received the therapy had better blood flow and were more able to take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide, the study showed. ‘It’s as if gene therapy turbocharges each individual cell to manufacture many more proteins in its own IL-10 factory,’ Keshavjee said [Bloomberg]. The lungs also performed better and were better tolerated by the pigs who received the transplants, according to the study published in Science Translational Medicine.
The researchers also tried the first parts of the procedure on donated human lungs that were too damaged to transplant. The human lungs showed the same improvements in blood flow and respiration, suggesting that the therapy could repair lungs that would otherwise have been discarded, and could therefore increase the stock of available organs. Last year, 234 people in the U.S. died while waiting for a lung transplant…. Currently, more than 1,800 people in the U.S. are waiting for a lung [Bloomberg].
The human lungs weren’t transplanted into sick patients, but if Keshavjee’s experiments continue to go well human trials could begin in about a year. While questions about gene therapy remain–in some cases, the viral vectors used to transport genes have been found to cause serious side effects–the new approach has the potential to be a breath of fresh air.
Related Content:
80beats: Doctors Work Towards Womb Transplants–But Are They Ethical?
80beats: China May Stop Harvesting Organs From Executed Prisoners
80beats: Making Pig Stem Cells Raises the Possibility of Animal Organ Donors
DISCOVER: The Second Coming of Gene Therapy
Image: Science / AAAS
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(Via Discover Health & Medicine.)
La Brancaia Il Blu 2006: “La Brancaia Il Blu 2006
La Brancaia Il Blu 2006 is one of the best Super Tuscan wines around and with a growing reputation it won’t stay on my QPR doozy list for long. The 2006 vintage is sumptuous. A fantastic year for Merlot in Italy, that supple little grape has provided the knock out punch to the other great red of La Brancaia’s, Ilatraia. Usually, vintage after vintage these two wines can barely be separated both excellent though with very different flavour profiles. However, this year Il Blu is a baby giraffes neck ahead and with 96 points from Galloni and a Tre Bicchiere award, I had to get hold of this years vintage and see if the wine justified this stonking rating.
Swiss owned La Brancaia are foremostly fine exponents of Chianti Classico, and, like many other Tuscan estates with Chianti holdings, soon turned their attention to the cheaper and Bordeaux-esque Maremma to begin producing Super Tuscan wines. Still today these wines are wowing the critics. A little out of fashion in the noughties those in the know still swear by the Super Tuscan often rivalling, sometimes surpassing, the quality of Bordeaux and often for a fraction of the price. The interesting thing about Il Blu, a 50% Sangiovese, 45% Merlot and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon wine is that it’s not actually from Maremma but grown within the Chianti jurisdiction.
The excellent thing about it, is that this wine can still be found for under £40. 96 Point wines at £40 are very few and far between especially from such a famous region. Although I wasn’t quite as impressed, to me 96 represents a unique barrier to push through, I happily award this wine 95 Points and a rubber stamped BUY.
As frequent readers of this blog will know, I spent 3 of the last 4 years living in Italy and one of the most beautiful things about it, excluding the people, countryside, food and wine, was the way these 4 qualities were often married. We spent many Friday evenings drinking and eating at the local Agriturismo’s, where you ate the produce from the working farms, many of these were not just farms and restaurants but also hotels too. At La Brancaia you can also take a vacation with a stunning location, great food and wine of course, and set yourself right in the heart of a gorgeous Italian wine holiday. Check it out here.
Back to the wine. I popped and poured the La Brancaia Il Blu 2006 on Sunday which, to be honest, was a good 5 years too early. The wines of La Brancaia, apart from the Chianti Classico which is surprisingly accessible young, should all be given at least 5 years in the cellar. Despite this it was very clear to see that this was a very special wine and after some time to breath I can say that, for 2009 so far, this is the best QPR wine of the year. If you love Italian wines you have to seek this out, if you are into Bordeaux you have to seek this out, if you collect wine to sell for profit… you have to seek this out. If an alien were to come down from Mars, point a gun to my head and forced me to choose just one wine to attempt to please his palate…I’d choose this wine.
Food Match: Duck, Pigeon or Venison.
Best Wines from this Producer: Consistently excellent within their varietal.
Chianti Classico
Brancia Il Blu
Tre
Ilatraia
La Brancaia Il Blu 2006 – BUY – £39
Deep dark ruby red edging on purple, the wine sits thick in the glass. On the nose you are taken on a power tour of fruit with cherries, plum and spicy vanilla oak. The wine is full bodied with the aromas carrying through to the attack. The mid palate is powerful and tannic at the moment but still enjoyable with the finish almost endless. Brilliantly structured, the wine hides the alcohol brilliantly and is sure to improve with age. 95 Points
Where can I buy this wine?
Europeans – Chicago WC – $47.50
Americans – Divine Golosita Toscane – €40
Brits – WineDirect – £39
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Which wine would you give to an alien to showcase the best planet earth had to offer?
Italian Wine Blog – Wine90
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(Via Italian Wine Blog – Wine90.)
Silence! The Last of the Giant Radio Telescopes Is Listening to the Universe: “
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There’s a geek mecca in them thar hills. And don’t expect your iPhone’s GPS to guide you to it. Hidden in the green hills of West Virginia, in a 13,000-square-mile National Radio Quiet Zone, is the world’s largest fully steerable telescope.
The GBT (Great Big Telescope, Great Big Thing or Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, depending on whom you ask) is the most overbooked telescope in the world. The waiting list to get some time on this baby is long and prestigious. And with good cause: Its sensitivity to radio signals is unparalleled.
The telescope is so sensitive, in fact, that the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) has a van that drives around the surrounding countryside asking people to stop using their wireless speaker systems, electric fences, broadband wireless modems, military radar, etc. — anything that might interfere with the telescope’s readings.
With the growing popularity of radio-array telescopes, the GBT may end up being the last single-dish telescope of its kind built in the world. The difference between an array and a giant single-dish like the GBT is the difference between a zoom and wide-angle lens on your camera. The GBT is extremely good at finding a source in space by searching a wide area, while the radio array is like a telephoto lens that good at looking at the details.
Read on for a tour of this towering instrument of space exploration.
Above: The GBT is 485 feet tall, a nudge taller than the Statue of Liberty and a nudge shorter than the Washington monument. It was put into service in early 2000.
Below: The NRAO’s 140 telescope is just around the corner from the GBT. The 140 was out of service for a number of years, but has been brought back online in conjunction with an MIT project to study turbulent properties of the earth’s ionosphere.
Photos: Jim Merithew/Wired.com
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(Via Wired Science.)
Eater Inside: Behold Againn, DC's New Gastropub (and Its Expansion Plans): “
[Photos: Powers and Crewe Photography]
The pretty lady seen here is Againn, a new gastropub opening tomorrow in Washington DC. The chef is Wes Morton, whose resume boasts places like Citronelle and the French Laundry. And then there’s the booze side of the operation, where San Francisco cocktail stars Scott Baird and Josh Harris are consulting on the opening, and they’ve put together an insane beverage program that includes 100+ scotches, 100+ beers by the bottle and 17 beers on tap.
Even more notable might be the people behind Againn, the Whisk Group headed by Ritz-Carlton vet Mark Weiss, who is looking to expand aggressively both nationwide and globally. Up next is a pastry shop in DC called Cioccopan, and if all goes to plan, a second, similar gastropub concept in Dubai of all places. Plus, as seen on the website, there are several other concepts (Italian, Belgian, et al.) currently being shopped around the country by Weiss and Company.
· The Whisk Group [Official Site]
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(Via Eater National.)
A New Beautiful Bend Oregon Prefab: “
Since we first mentioned Stillwater Dwellings in March, the new company has been extremely busy. Not only have they lined up plans to build green prefabs in Portland (Or.), Santa Barbara (Ca.), and Healdsburg (Ca.), but they’ve recently completed their first prefab home in Bend, Oregon. The company was kind enough to send us a few photos of the inside and outside, and the modern home is just stunning.
It was built using the sd231 floor plan and includes 2,950 square feet of space. Of that space, there’s three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, a laundry room, and 600 square feet of garage space. Amazingly, the cost to construct it was $175 per square foot, which includes site work (i.e., excavation, foundation, utilities, and driveway) and six modules of transportation.
Stillwater Dwellings built the home in three weeks in the factory, spent a week making sure everything was good, set the home in 5.5 hours on site, and ushered in the homeowners about three weeks later. Now that’s pretty quick! The completed home has some of the following green features:
- Marmoleum flooring in guest bath & laundry room;
- Honed Caesarstone countertops;
- Dual flush toilets and low-consumption plumbing faucets;
- All Energy Star appliances;
- Passive cooling with clerestory windows at the highest point of the room;
- Operable skylights (3 total) in the middle for stack effect cooling;
- Low VOC paints inside & out;
- Hardwood floors finished using a OSMO Hardwax Oil;
- 100% natural wool carpet w/ recycled content pad;
- SFI certified wood windows with low-e film and argon gas;
- High-efficiency heat pump;
- Automated HVAC system pegged to outside and forecast weather;
- Smart, automated lighting systems on dimmers;
- Systems monitored/adjusted via a web-based portal (or iPhone); and
- All native landscaping elements.
Some people assume that a prefab won’t have open or expansive spaces inside, but as you can see below, Stillwater Dwellings doesn’t design or build your average prefab home. This home has 10′ lower level ceilings and up to 13′ clerestory windows on the top floor. And the great room is 16′ wide by 45′ long.
Photo credits: Stillwater Picasa Album and Stillwater Dwellings.
Mary’s Monday Metazoan: Mighty Moose [Pharyngula]: “
Reader Lindsay sent along this pair of photos of a moose taking a stroll along a dirt road near Elliot Lake, near Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan ‘s Upper Peninsula.
That’s not a footpath, by the way. It’s a single lane dirt road for cars, just to give some sense of how big this beast is.
Alois Lageder Cabernet Sauvignon Cor Romigberg: “Alois Lageder Cabernet Sauvignon Cor Romigberg
Alois Lageder is one of the major players on the South Tyrol wine map producing a large and varied quantity of quality and affordable wines. In it’s fifth generation, the latest Lageder is one of the pioneers in bio dynamic wine making in the region. Lageder, like many producers in the area, buy in grapes from local growers for many of their cheaper, single varietal wines. Most of these wines are fair priced and jolly good examples of the vast variety of grapes able to reach full ripeness in the cool but endlessly sunny Southern Tyrol.
The single vineyard–Lageder produced wines are grown along bio dynamic lines and the entire estate is environmentally adapted to the nth degree with solar panelling propelling the operation.
Alois Lageders Cabernet Sauvignon Cor Romigberg is practically unrivalled in the Southern Tyrol. Although the area is blessed with a ridiculous amount of sunshine hours, Cabernet Sauvignon is perhaps not one of the varieties that springs to mind when we envisage the Southern Tyrol because Cabernet Sauvignon likes to bask in the heat to fully ripen. However, it is the exceptional management of the vines here, as well as exhaustive analysis of the grapes that has produced a cool climate Cabernet without the ‘green’.
The Romigberg vineyards are one of the most southerly of the Lageder parcels, several miles south of Bolzano and just north of the town of Termeno. Nestled between lake and mountain, it is little surprise then that this Cabernet Sauvignon has a very real and pronounced vein of minerality. What is a surprise is the luscious fruit, spice and floral notes that the wine offers. Containing just 3% Petit Verdot as an accompanying grape it seems improbable that the PV is driving the fruit.
The Cor Romigberg is the pride of the Lageder brand and spends 20 months in two thirds new french oak followed by a further 8 in bottle before release. The vines are at high density using the Guyot trellising system. In Italy these wines come onto the market around the €30 mark which, comparing to Tuscan Cabernet Sauvignons of this standard is a remarkable bargain. This is a classic cool climate Cabernet so don’t imagine that the flavour profile will be anything like a Tuscan or southern Italian Cab.
Recently I had the opportunity to try the ’03, a blazing hot vintage throughout Italy that played a part in reducing the usual minerality of the wine and gave further notice to the fruit. The Cor Romigberg is a wine that can benefit from cellaring in more typical vintages, however with the ’03 I’m happy to say the wine is drinking beautifully at the end of 2009.
Alois Lageder Cabernet Sauvignon Cor Romigberg 2003 – BUY – £32
The darkest brooding ruby red. The nose is at once cherries, oak inspired spice, cassis and tobacco, a real aroma fans wine. On the palate the wine has strong but not aggressive tannins, it is powerful and the fruit is complimented by a straight minerality that gives this wine it’s cool climate Cabernet feel. The finish is long and fruit driven the same as the attack. 90 Points.
Without tasting previous vintages it is hard to know if the Cor Romigberg is never green due to the grape selection process or if this particular vintage was so warm in the Southern Tyrol that this vintage is an anomaly putting it somewhere between a hot and cold climate Cabernet, it is at the very least a delicious wine.
Food Match: Lamb cutlets.
Best Wines from this Producer: Consistently excellent within their varietal.
Cabernet Sauvignon Cor Romigberg
Sauvignon Lehenhof
Chardonnay Lowengang
Pinot Grigio Benefizium Porer
Pinot Nero Krafuss
Where can I buy this Wine?
Europeans – Superiore.de – €36
Americans – SS Wines – $26.99
Brits – Superiore.de – £32
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Favourite Cabernet Sauvignon growing regions and favourite producer?
Italian Wine Blog – Wine90
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(Via Italian Wine Blog – Wine90.)
Sensium Life Pebble Wireless Vitals Monitor for Sport Training, Cardiac Health Auditing: “
Toumaz Technology out of Abingdon, UK has released the Sensium™ Life Pebble vital sign monitoring device. Featuring a single lead ECG, a skin thermometer, and an accelerometer to monitor physical activity, the unit can track ones performance for later analysis by a clinician.
Device features:
Wireless monitoring of heart rate and activity optimised for ambulatory conditions Accurate electrically-derived heart rate from R to R peak measurements 3-axis accelerometer to detect and measure physical activity Skin temperature sensor Robust data communication, even in noisy channels Up to 5 days’ operational use on a single hearing aid battery Light weight and ultra-small size (20gm with LR44 battery, excluding EKG leads)
Press release: Toumaz Technology Announces Availability of Sensium Life Pebble Wireless Vital Signs Monitor…
(Via Medgadget.)
Nikon Small World 2009 Winners Announced: “
The winners in this year’s Nikon Small World photomicrography contest have been announced. The competition, held annually since 1974, gives a good overview of how optics and digital technology have opened up the beauty of the microworld. Below is the grand prize winner and one of the runners up that we particularly enjoyed.
Heiti Paves, Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) anther (20X)
Arlene Wechezak, Algae and diatoms (10X)
Link: Nikon Small World 2009 Winners…
(Via Medgadget.)
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