Better safe than sorry, a second round of tests went ahead on the shuttle.
The second test comes just days before Discovery will be rolled back into a hangar to replace its tank with a safer, updated model. Shuttle managers decided to remove Discovery's fuel tank, which is attached to a pair of booster rockets, and install a brand new set that had been meant for the second post-Columbia flight, by Atlantis.
A heater will be inserted on the new tank to prevent the buildup of ice once super cold fuel is pumped in right before liftoff. Engineering tests found ice to be as dangerous as flying foam. As a result, the launch date was bumped from late May to mid-July.
Will she fly this year? Who's taking bets?
Fuel Cells For Your Laptop
A British research group has claimed a breakthrough in fuel cell technology for batteries for your laptop.
Cambridge-based CMR Fuel Cells said it had made a breakthrough with a new design of fuel cell which is a tenth of the size of existing models and small enough to replace conventional batteries in laptop computers.
"We firmly believe CMR technology is the equivalent of the jump from transistors to integrated circuits," said John Halfpenny, the firm's chief executive.
Fuel cells have for years been touted as the next big green power source. They produce electricity via a chemical reaction and emit only tiny amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) -- the main greenhouse gas blamed by many scientists for global warming.
Coal and gas-fired power stations produce far more CO2.But high costs and doubts about widespread availability of fuel -- usually hydrogen -- have held back the technology's transition to the mainstream despite years of research by energy firms and the automotive industry. CMR said the new design would run for four times longer than conventional batteries in a laptop or other devices like power tools.
"It's also instantly rechargable," said Michael Priestnall, chief technology officer at CMR. Priestnall and chief engineer Michael Evans came up with the design while working at Cambridge-based consultancy Generics Group.
Evans said the design, which would run initially on methanol, was based on new type of fuel stack which mixed air and fuel. Up to now fuel stacks have relied on complete separation of the two.
So they're going to talk to the department of defense to see how it could be used militarily.
Cloning On The March
While people debate the morality of it, cloning science simply keeps moving on. Today a British group claim to have succesfully cloned a human embryo using the nuclear transfer technique. We're talking the Dolly-The-Cloned-Sheep technique for cloning.
Britain, which four years ago became the world's first country to license cloning to create stem cells, is aiming to join South Korea on the leading edge of the research, which many scientists believe may lead to new treatments for a range of diseases.
A team of South Korean scientists who last year were the first to clone a human embryo announced Thursday that they had dramatically sped up the creation of human embryonic stem cells, growing 11 new batches that for the first time were a genetic match for injured or sick patients.
The Newcastle researchers were granted a license in August by Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority. Ian Wilmut, the creator of Dolly the sheep, was later granted a license earlier this year to clone embryos as part of his research into motor neuron disease.
The Newcastle researchers hope eventually to create insulin-producing cells that could be transplanted into diabetics. Two of the team, Alison Murdoch and Dr. Miodrag Stojkovic, said they were "delighted" by the Koreans' progress.
"They have shown conclusively that these techniques can be successful in humans," they said. "The promise of new treatments based on stem cell technology is moving nearer to becoming a realistic possibility."
The researchers are not using cloning to make babies. Instead, scientists create test-tube embryos to supply stem cells, the building blocks which give rise to every tissue in the body and which are a genetic match for a particular patient, preventing rejection by the immune system.
If scientists could harness the regenerative power of those stem cells, they might be able to repair damage from spinal cord injuries, diabetes, Parkinson's and other diseases.
So they say. More interesting is the Korean team who have cloned stem cells as this probably leads towards a cure for degenerative diseases by replacing the lost cells with new ones.
- Art Neuro
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