Marios D. Demetriou

A metallic-glass rod before heating and molding (left); a molded metallic-glass part (middle); the final product with its excess material trimmed off (right).

A new breakthrough in the manufacturing of so called metallic glass, a material that is stronger than steel and titanium, could lead to a new generation of super-tough cell-phone cases and airplane parts, according to a new study.

Metallic glass is not transparent like windows. Rather they are metals that have non-crystalline structure.

While glass is generally strong, hard, and resistant to deformation, it tends to easily crack or shatter. Metals resist cracking and brittle fracture, but have limited strength. Metallic glass combines the strength of glass with the toughness of metals.

Metallic glass has been around since 1960 and produced in bulk form since the 1990s, but the manufacturing process has been prohibitively expensive for mass producing things such as cell phone cases.

Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a new technique that allows them to make metallic glass parts using the same inexpensive process used to produce plastic parts.

"We've redefined how you process metals," William Johnson, a professor of engineering and applied science who led the research, said in a news release.

Making metallic glass
Current metallic glass parts are produced by heating a metal above 1,000 degrees Celsius, which is above the melting point of the crystalline phase. Then, the molten metal is cast into a steel mold where it is cooled before it crystallizes.

The problem is that steel molds are typically designed to withstand temperatures of around 600 degrees Celsius. As a result, molds often break and need to be replaced, which makes the process expensive.

The new process involves heating and processing the metallic glass quickly to between about 500 and 600 degrees Celsius, where it has the same fluidity as liquid plastic — fluid enough to be injected into a mold and allowed to freeze all before it crystallizes. 

The trick is heating the metallic glass quickly. They do this with a process called ohmic heating, which passes a brief jolt of power — about a megawatt — to heat a small rod of metallic glass in about a millisecond.

The current pulse heats the entire rod, about 4 millimeters in diameter and 2 millimeters long, at a rate of a million degrees per second. "We uniformly heat the glass at least a thousand times faster than anyone has before," Johnson said. 

Since it takes only about half a millisecond to reach the moldable liquid state, the material can be injected into a mold and cooled all before crystals form.

From donuts to iPhone cases?
To prove the point, the researchers heated the rod to 550 degrees Celsius and molded it into a toroid, a donut-shaped object, in less than 40 milliseconds. The new shape is still metallic glass. 

"We end up with inexpensive, high-performance, precision net-shape parts made in the same way plastic parts are made – but made of a metal that's 20 times stronger and stiffer than plastic," Johnson said. 

The process, which is detailed in the May 13 issue of Science, has been patented and is being developed for commercialization. A metallic-glass case for the iPhone? It really could be right around the corner.

More stories on metallic-glass

• Lightweight metallic glass is strong as steel 
• Metallic glass could encase future Apple products 
• New type of glass resists small explosions 
• SpongeBob's cousins are masters of glass 

Gerald Allen / Conservation International

These fangblenny fish, observed in the coral reefs around Bali, appear to represent a new species in the genus Meiacanthus. Click on the image to see a slideshow featuring nine new finds from Bali.

Researchers say they've seen nine potentially new species in the waters surrounding one of the world's most exotic locales, the island of Bali — but they've also seen the damage that humans can do to a once-pristine environment.

The good-news, bad-news report comes from Conservation International, a nonprofit group that has been cataloging new species and the perils they face for decades. Over the past three years, Conservation International's Rapid Assessment Program has documented 953 species of fish and 397 species of coral in Bali's reefs.

The group is working with local partners at the request of the Bali provincial government and fisheries officials, who are looking for advice on how best to protect the region's marine riches.

"We carried out this present survey in 33 sites around Bali, nearly completing a circle around it, and were impressed by much of what we saw," Mark Erdmann, senior adviser for the CI Indonesia marine program, said in a news release. "There was a tremendous variety of habitats, surprisingly high levels of diversity, and the coral reefs appeared to be in an active stage of recovery from bleaching, destructive fishing and crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks in the 1990s."

This year, a two-week survey identified eight species of fish and one species of coral that may be new to science, Conservation International said. Those species include two types of cardinalfish, two varieties of dottyfish, a sandperch, a fangblenny, a garden eel, a goby fish and a previously unknown type of bubble coral.

Check out this slideshow to see the marine menagerie.

Scientists have been tracking the health of Bali's coral reefs since those grim years of the 1990s. "Compared to 12 years ago, we observed an increase in healthy coral reef cover in the area surveyed, indicating a recovery phase. That is why it needs serious protection and management, to complete the revitalization," said Ketut Sarjana Putra, CI Indonesia's acting executive director.

As good as all this sounds, the researchers also saw causes for concern: During this year's two-week survey, divers spotted just three reef sharks and three Napoleon wrasse — which is about as many large reef predators as a diver would see in a healthy reef system during the course of a single dive. Plastic pollution was "omnipresent," Conservation International reported, and the team saw how fishing operations were encroaching on no-take areas in West Bali National Park.

The team recommended that the Bali government come up with a priority list for areas that need immediate protection. The experts also saw a need for better spatial planning to reduce the clash between fishing and marine tourism, for stronger commitment to enforcement and public funding for protected areas, and stricter measures to manage pollution from plastics, sewage and agricultural runoff.

"This RAP survey highlights how important these marine protected areas are to improving economic returns from marine tourism while also providing food security and ensuring the sustainability of small-scale artisanal fisheries,” Erdmann said in the news release.

More beauties from the search for new species:

• RAP stars rock the animal world
• Lost frogs found in Haiti
• Three new frogs leap into spotlight
• Amphibians wanted ... alive
• New species from New Guinea
• Scientists finish first sea census
• Deep-sea creatures of the Coral Sea
• The top 10 new species from 2009
• Beautiful biodiversity in Brazil
• New Guinea's 'Lost World' revisited
• Indonesia's 'Garden of Eden'
• Papua New Guinea's new species
• Marine marvels from Papua New Guinea
• Biological treasures from Borneo
• Celebrities of the Celebes Sea
• 12 froggy finds from India
• Fantastic frogs from Colombia
• Aliens lurk in Antarctic depths
• The strange species of Suriname
• Vulnerable new species in Brazil
• Discoveries from Vietnam's 'Green Corridor'
• Endangered species of the Mekong Delta
• New species from Australia's coral reefs
• Thousands of new species in ocean's depths
• Hundreds of new species amid the Himalayas
• New species found Down Under .. underground
• Eight 'extinct' species found alive and kicking  

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. 

NASA file

The development of a "Star Trek" tricorder-style medical device, similar to this NASA mockup, may be worth a $10 million prize.

A real-life diagnostic device that does something akin to what the tricorder did on "Star Trek" just might earn its developers $10 million prize. And yes, the proposed competition is actually being called the Tricorder X Prize. It's just one more example of life imitating "Trek." In the words of Mr. Spock: Fascinating!

The objective of the project, currently being explored by the X Prize Foundation and Qualcomm, is not just to create one more cool gadget for "Trek" fans ... although the idea of a hand-held, automated medical diagnostic device is pretty cool. The objective is to extend the reach of health information and services to billions more people in the world.

"We believe this is a fundamental step in helping people become true 'health consumers' who can have as much say in assessing and accessing health care as they would any other service or product," Don Jones, vice president of wireless health strategy and market development at Qualcomm Labs, said in this week's announcement about the project. "Qualcomm believes the value of this X Prize is also in changing the cost structure and focus of health care. By having consumers take the initial actions to obtain health assessment data, the use and the quality of physicians' time is improved."

The competition is modeled on earlier incentive programs such as the $10 million Ansari X Prize for private-sector spaceflight, or the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize for super-efficient road vehicles. The basic idea is to encourage the development of mobile devices that can diagnose patients at least as well as a panel of board-certified physicians.

"The goal obviously is to drive a lot of innovation toward this narrow goal of easy-to-use, low-cost, minimally invasive, rapid, portable and scalable diagnosis," Jones told me during a follow-up interview.

Over the next few months, Qualcomm and the X Prize Foundation will be working together to flesh out the rules and requirements for the Tricorder X Prize. Jones emphasized that this is just the "design phase" for the venture. Qualcomm isn't yet committed to putting up any prize money, but it does have "the option of funding part or all of the prize," he said.

If the design phase is successful, the competition would begin in early 2012.

So what's in it for Qualcomm, a company that focuses on wireless network technology? "Qualcomm has a wireless health effort, we've had it for some time, and we believe there is a real interest to tie together the world of sensors and the world of informatics," Jones told me. "We're very interested in connecting more items to the cellular-powered Internet, and this is a category of items. Perhaps many categories of items will come out of this."

There are already a goodly number of mobile medical devices out there, including some pretty fancy hand-held ultrasound imagers. Three years ago, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley demonstrated a portable medical scanner that could be hooked up to a mobile phone to create a tricorder-like diagnostic system. But Jones said he thought the device that won the Tricorder X Prize would have to hit a higher level of sophistication — in effect, telling users on the spot whether they should go see a professional.

The tricorder might have to check not only ultrasound readings, but heart rate, respiration, perspiration, salivation and other health indicators. "It's fairly clear that a prizewinner is going to have to figure out how to integrate multiple sensing technologies, using multiple databases," Jones said.

Can one device do it all ... and make those cool "Star Trek" noises as well? Share your thoughts in the comment section below, and stay tuned for future episodes.

More about 'Trek' medical tech:

• Ex-astronaut aims to build tricorders 
• Researchers use phones to detect cancers
• Health-oriented smartphone apps draw caution
• The doctor will see you now ... on the space shuttle

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. 

When you look back at the past 50 years of human spaceflight, don't forget the computer scientists who helped make it all possible.

That's the message Arthur Cohen wants to pass along on the golden anniversary of NASA astronaut Alan Shepard's 1961 Freedom 7 spaceflight, a 15-minute suborbital outing that marked one not-so-small step on the way to the moon. The successful flights made by Shepard and other members of the Mercury 7 depended on the work done by Cohen and thousands of other workers behind the scenes.

"There was a lot of attention given to the seven astronauts," Cohen recalled in an interview this week. "The thing that was hardly mentioned was the fact that there were computers that were doing the work."

Today, Cohen is an adjunct professor of mathematics at Nassau Community College in New York, but back in the early 1960s he was manager for the IBM Space Computer Center in Washington, where he directed the development of all computing support for Project Mercury. Two IBM 7090 computer systems at NASA's nearby Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, plus a backup IBM 709 computer in the Bahamas, provided all the raw number-crunching power to plot the trajectories of those early spacecraft. Western Electric and Bell Labs provided the supporting communication network.

"In those days, 1,000 bits per second was high speed," the 83-year-old Cohen told me.

The data streaming down from space was funneled through Goddard and then onward to Cape Canaveral, where mission controllers kept watch on the real-time channel. "All the displays at the Cape were actually provided by us," Cohen said. Somewhere around 75 to 100 people were on IBM's team to make sure the computers were in sync.

A picture from the old days shows Cohen and members of his team gathered around the computer center, with Mercury astronauts Deke Slayton and Gus Grissom in their midst. "We did wear white shirts — that's the way IBM was back then, right? — but maybe our sleeves were rolled up," Cohen joked.

IBM

The IBM computer team mixes it up with Mercury astronauts Gus Grissom (fifth from the right) and Deke Slayton (second from the right). Arthur Cohen is fourth from the left.

After Project Mercury, Cohen turned to other, more down-to-Earth projects at IBM in New York, and retired from the company in 1988. But he says the spaceflight experience set the tone for his career and those of a whole generation of engineers. "The people who worked on the project did go on to Gemini and Apollo, and some of the people went on to the airline reservation system. One of my guys went on to the air traffic control system and managed that.," he said. "There was a lot of fallout from this stuff."

IBM

Arthur Cohen is now an adjunct professor of mathematics at Nassau Community College.

Today, almost everything about spaceflight and its computing requirements is different.

"Things have improved, but it's basically the same kind of stuff. You still have to check data, edit data, smooth data," he said. "You're still driving displays. But I think the space game is going to be much more about understanding something about deep space. It'll be a different challenge. Here, you're talking about doing an orbit in 88 minutes. There, you may be talking about years [of orbital calculations], so things may be going somewhat slower in terms of feedback about what's happening."

Despite all those diferences, Cohen suspects that the level of dedication among computer scientists will be as high as ever.

"The future for them can't be any brighter," he said. "Computers are going to be behind everything that can help mankind, whether it be medicine, or crop yields, or space. Whatever it might be, computers are going to be important. Who knows what we need to do?"

To learn more about Cohen and the contributions made by Project Mercury's "unsung computers," check out IBM's news release and this report from the DVICE blog. Do you have some behind-the-scenes stories about the past 50 years of spaceflight? If so, feel free to share your tales in the comment section below.

More on spaceflight history:

• Timeline: Glory Days on the Final Frontier
• Slideshow: Remembering Alan Shepard
• NASA celebrates 50 years of Americans in space
• Historic Mercury launch pad reimagined as classroom

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. 

The Johns Hopkins University

A screen shot from a language learning experiment shows a "slergena" and teacher Glermi.

"Blueberry!" I tell my 15-month-old son as I hand him one, hoping that he makes the connection between the piece of fruit and its name as I daydream about the glorious day when he says, "Please, Dad, can I have another blueberry?" 

For now, he points at the bowl full of tasty morsels and babbles something incomprehensible. His pediatrician, family and friends all assure me that he's on the right track. Before I know it, he'll be rattling off the request for another blueberry and much, much more. 

This pointing and babbling is all a part of the language learning process, they say, even though the process itself remains largely a mystery. One prominent, though controversial, hypothesis is that some knowledge of grammar is hardwired into our brains.

"There's some knowledge that the learner has that actually makes this process easier," Jennifer Culbertson, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Rochester, explained to me today.

This hypothesis was originally proposed 50 years ago by philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Culbertson recently confirmed it with an experiment featuring a virtual green blob for a teacher named Glermi who speaks a nonsensical language called Verblog. 

Teacher Glermi
In the study, Glermi taught participants – all of them English-speaking adults – his language via a video game interface.

In one experiment, Glermi displayed an unusual looking blue alien object called a "slergena" on the screen and instructed the participants to say "geej slergena," which in Verblog means "blue slergena." Then participants saw three of those objects on the screen and were instructed to say "slergena glawb," which means "slergena three."

For English speakers, the word order of "blue slergena" is normal but "slergena three" is out of whack. Many of the world's languages use both word orders – that is, in many languages adjectives precede nouns and many nouns are followed by numerals. However, rarely are both of these rules used together in the same language.

"We created a language that actually substantiates that (rare) pattern," Culbertson explained. "What we want to know is do learners actually have a problem learning that pattern or is the fact that it is rare across the world's languages just a coincidence. Is it something fundamental or not?"

She and colleagues at The Johns Hopkins University, where the experiments were performed while Culbertson was a doctoral student, found that adults had difficulty learning to speak proper Verblog. Versions of "bad Verblog" that have word orders common to the world's languages were easy to learn.

The finding, Culbertson notes, supports the hypothesis that certain properties of human grammar – such as where adjectives, nouns and numerals should occur – are hardwired into the human brain from birth.

The finding in adult test subjects, she adds, shows that these fundamental rules stay with us as we grow older. The adults could have had, for example, trouble learning all versions of Verblog, or used a more sophisticated, acquired language learning ability to learn all versions of Verblog. 

"The fact of the matter is they didn't learn the one that is also rare typologically. So that suggests that there are at least some things that stay constant as we grow up," she said.

Replicating with kids
This summer, Culberston plans to run the experiment with kids. She anticipates replication of the results, but also expects to see some differences. Children are widely thought to be able to learn language more quickly and easily than adults, she noted.

And my son, she assured me, is on the right track. As her results indicate, the fundamentals of grammar are already in place. "That's what makes his job easier," she told me. Soon, he'll be asking for his blueberries in a language I can comprehend. 

And so, with patience, I count out "one, two, three blueberries" and put them on his tray. He looks at me, smiles, and picks them up with one fell swoop and stuffs them in his mouth. 

More stories on learning languages: 

• What bilingual babies reveal about the brain 
• Fluent in another language? The CIA wants you 
• Unraveling how kids become bilingual so easily 
• A baby's babble leads to language 

A study on the findings are under review for publication in the journal Cognition.

John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook pageor following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

People living above the natural gas-rich reserves stretching below New Jersey and Pennsylvania have been complaining about bubbly, polluted water caused by the controversial gas mining technique called "fracking" for years. Natural gas companies have been tuning out their concerns. So NYU's Studio 20 and the deep-digging journalists at ProPublica decided to make a new animated music video, to get companies, legislators and voters to finally listen up. 

The video raps through the basics of fracking (and just so you know, sci-fi fans, it's got nothing to do with "Battlestar Galactica"). It's a process in which tons of water are pumped underground into gas-soaked shales, releasing the trapped gases. Fracking is an effective way to flush out the fuel, but the used water is laced with toxic, often flammable chemicals like benzene and formaldehyde. If the water isn't cleaned up, those chemicals can spread into the drinking water supply of nearby towns.

Regulations overseeing safe fracking have been lax since 2005, when the U.S. government under President Bush decided that natural gas companies were exempt from following the Safe Drinking Water Act. But since earlier this year, things seem to be changing. In early May, Duke University scientists published a study that for the first time linked methane pollution in the water in some Pennsylvanian towns to the methane leaking out of natural gas pipes, and potentially from fracked fissures. On May 5, U.S. Department of Energy chief Steven Chu announced the formation of a panel tasked with making recommendations for clean ways to extract natural gas.

As for the rap, it may be a good way to spread the message virally — it's already appearing on Rachel Maddow's blog, among other sites — but we'll have to hear more before judging whether or not Studio 20 can quit their day jobs.

More on natural gas drilling from msnbc.com:

• Report links fracking to tainted U.S. drinking water
• Md. official testifies on natural gas drilling
• Tracking fracking water going high-tech
• Oil spill's energy lesson for Obama

Nidhi Subbaraman is an editorial intern specializing in technology and science coverage at msnbc.com.

A four-legged bipedal robot named Ranger, about as tall as a human adult truncated at the hips, has walked 40.5 miles on a single battery charge without stopping or any human hand-holding, smashing a world record, researchers reported this week.

The robot was built and programmed at Cornell University. It started walking around an indoor track on May 1 just after 2:00 p.m. ET and came to an abrupt stop May 2 at 9 p.m., after 30 hours, 49 minutes and 2 seconds. In that time, Ranger made 307.75 laps around the .13 mile track at an ambling pace of 1.3 mph. 

The feat differs from the robot marathon in Japan earlier this year, in which the robots were repeatedly recharged. Ranger just kept going and going and going.

"Towards the end, we were getting kind of sick of it," Andy Ruina, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering who is leading the effort, told me today. He admitted to catching a few hours of sleep on pole vault landing pads at one point. 

The long walk bested the team's previous record set in July 2010, in which Ranger covered 14.3 miles. Prior to that, Boston Dynamic's Big Dog, a four-legged robot, had gone 12.8 miles without refueling.

Advanced stamina
The advance in Ranger's stamina comes from an improved controls algorithm, electronics and energy efficiency, the team said.

The 22-pound robot, outfitted with a red Cornell baseball cap for its walk, has six onboard computers and dozens of electrical and mechanical sensors. Motors extend the outer and inner ankles, and a third swings the legs. A fourth motor twists the inner legs for steering. 

"A difference between (Ranger) and most robots is that it has rounded feed and not flat feet," Ruina said. "So most robots, almost all Japanese robots, they can stand upright ... This one can't do that. If you tried to stand it up, it would just tip over."

Ranger achieves balance by falling and catching itself with each step. In fact, the team had a side bet going about how Ranger would end up when its charge finally expired. Three members thought it would fall on its face, three thought it would fall on its back. "I bet standing up and I won," Ruina said.

All told, the robot requires 16 watts to run. When calculated on a scale called of transport (COT) that takes into account weight and speed, Ranger uses 0.28 joules per netwon-meter. For comparison, most robots have a COT of 1.5 or more. Humans walk with a COT of about 0.2. A Toyota Prius is about 0.08.

Efficient walking
Ranger's energy efficiency stems from its original design. Ruina started building machines that could walk down gentle slopes without a motor at all then adding the power needed to allow it to walk along a flat surface. "In the end, it got much more sophisticated than that, but that was the starting philosophy."

Going forward, the team hopes to build a more human-like bipedal robot that has to contend with side-to-side balance and fore-and-aft balance. Such a robot, Ruina said, would help him achieve his overall goal of explaining how humans walk with the laws of physics.

"It should be that you can explain how people walk somehow in terms of Newton's laws. And what we see is that people somehow walk using very little energy so there should be some way of using Newton's laws to understand people as if they are a machine that uses very little energy," he said.

More stories on walking robots:

• Video: First robot marathon begins next week 
• Model female robot to hit Japan catwalk 
• Robot suit for rent in Japan to help people walk 
• One giant leap for walking robots 
• Rolling robot inspired by caterpillar 

Getty Images

The potential for a catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius is stirring up debate among scientists and civil authorities in Italy.

Vesuvius, the Italian volcano that famously erupted in AD 79 and destroyed Pompeii, may awaken sometime in the future with even more catastrophic results, according to some experts who consider the volcano the most dangerous in the world.

The prospect, which could spell disaster for nearby Naples, a metropolis of 3 million people, is stirring up a vigorous debate among scientists and civil authorities on how to prepare, journalist Katherine Barnes reports for Nature News. 

Part of the debate centers on the risk and scale of future eruptions. Some studies suggest the volcano is capable of massive eruptions, such as one some 3,800 years ago that triggered pyroclastic flows that buried Naples under 12 feet of ash and debris.

Other scientists argue that the eruptive nature of Vesuvius has changed over time and that smaller eruptions akin to one in 1631 are more the norm. That one killed 6,000 people but affected a much smaller area.

The course of disaster preparation planning depends on which scenario civil authorities choose as their basis. The worst case scenario would mean evacuating 3 million people from Naples. Other scenarios would delay such a complicated evacuation unless prevailing winds shifted and put it in harm's way.

"It's an extremely complex problem to solve," Augusto Neri at the National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology's lab in Pisa told Nature News. "We simply do not know how the volcano works." 

Barnes notes that the type of debate swirling around the potential catastrophic Vesuvius eruption is becoming more common in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. These types of disasters, called black swans, are unlikely but potentially devastating.

Another example is how to prepare for a potential devastating quake along the Cascadia subduction zone along the west coast of North America. There, experts say, the science pointing to a future earthquake and tsunami is clear, but planning for it is lagging behind.

More stories on Mount Vesuvius:

• Experts say heat, not suffocation, killed Mount Vesuvius' victims
• Pompeii family's final hours reconstructed 
• Ancient quake raises risk for modern Naples 
• Eight dangerous volcanoes around the world

David Silverman / Getty Images

The alcohol in wine, seen here being poured in a file photo for a tasting in Tel Aviv, Israel, is produced by yeast. Scientists are piecing together the evolutionary history of how and why yeast do this, which in turn could lead to new yeast strains for wine and beer fermentation as well as biofuel production.

Wine and beer drinkers of the world owe a lot of gratitude to yeast, the unicellular fungi that ferment sugars to ethanol, giving the fruit- and grain-based drinks their sought-after alcoholic kick. Now, scientists are closing in on just how and why yeast evolved to do this.

No, it wasn't to get humans drunk.

The special trick of yeast is the ability to ferment sugar to 2-carbon components, in particular ethanol, without completely oxidizing it to carbon dioxide, even in the presence of excess oxygen. This allows yeasts to out-compete other microorganisms.

A team of European researchers led by the yeast molecular genetics group at Lund University in Sweden has been trying to reconstruct the evolutionary history of ethanol production. In their latest effort, the team compared the genetic makeup of two wine yeasts: Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Dekkera bruxellensis.

The yeasts separated more than 200 million years ago and are not closely rated. However, the research shows that approximately 100 to 150 million years ago, both yeasts experienced similar environmental conditions and pressure: the appearance of sugar-laden fruits and competition from other microbes. 

The pressure, the researchers found, spurred both lineages, independently and in parallel, to develop the ability to make and accumulate ethanol in the presence of oxygen, and developed resistance to high ethanol concentration, and have been using this ability as a weapon to out-compete other microbes which are sensitive to ethanol.

Surprisingly, the team notes, both yeasts used the same molecular tool, global promoter rewiring, to change the regulation pattern of the expression of respiration-associated genes involved in sugar degradation, which allows ethanol to accumulate. The excess ethanol is toxic to other microbes. 

"Our results now help to reconstruct the original environment and evolutionary trends within the microbial community in the remote past," team leader Jure Piskur, a professor of molecular genetics at Lund University and the University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia, said in a news release. 

"In addition, we can now use the knowledge we have obtained to develop new yeast strains, which could be beneficial for wine and beer fermentation and in biofuel production."

A paper describing the latest research effort appears in Nature Communications.

More stories about yeast and drink:

• Yeast is rising as biofuel booster
• Ancient yeast reborn in modern beer
• Tinkering extends life of organism 10-fold
• Microbes plan ahead, predict future events
• The why behind a wine's bouquet

A Navy-funded effort to harness nuclear fusion power reports that its unconventional plasma device is operating as designed and generating "positive results" more than halfway through the project.

The latest quarterly update from EMC2 Fusion Development Corp. comes amid other signs that seemingly oddball approaches to fusion research may not be all that oddball after all. Just last week, General Fusion announced that Amazon.com's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, was part of a $19.5 million investment round to further the company's plan to take advantage of a technology called magnetized target fusion. Another billionaire, Paul Allen, is an investor in Tri Alpha Energy, which is working on its own hush-hush fusion project (and occasionally publishing its research).

EMC2 Fusion doesn't have tens of millions of venture capital to play with — but it does have a $7.9 million Navy contract to test a plasma technology known as inertial electrostatic confinement fusion, also known as Polywell fusion. The idea is to accelerate positively charged ions in an electrical cage to such an extent that they occasionally spark a fusion reaction, releasing energy and neutrons. The concept was pioneered by the late physicist Robert Bussard, and carried forward by the EMC2 Fusion team in Santa Fe, N.M.

Some of the leading team members went on leave from Los Alamos National Laboratory to work on EMC2. Rick Nebel, the Los Alamos engineer who led the company since Bussard's death in 2007, retired from the company last November. Taking his place as acting chief executive officer is Jaeyoung Park. The 41-year-old physicist says he's given up his position at Los Alamos to focus fully on EMC2.

"We had a lot of milestones to meet in the last six months or so," Park told me today. "It's been pretty hectic."

Working on a Wiffle Ball
The company currently employs eight or nine full-time technical staff members, and relies on about two dozen external consultants, Park said. The ultimate objective is to build a 100-megawatt demonstration fusion reactor, and Park hopes that the current small-scale experiment will show EMC2's scientists and their "customers" in the Navy whether this is realistic.

"If this machine works as we hope it will work, it will probably establish a firm technical foundation," he said. "People may say, 'It's a big jump and you shouldn't be doing this.' But every year that the energy problem doesn't get solved ... costs tens of billions of dollars. Sometimes waiting too long is not a good thing. If you look at the solutions, you might say, 'Can we afford to wait?'"

So how far along is EMC2? The current experiment is known as WB-8, which follows up on WB-5, 6 and 7. "WB" stands for "Wiffle Ball," which describes the spherical swiss-cheese look of the plasma containment cage. The $7.9 million contract covers work to see whether Bussard's fusion concept can be scaled up to a size capable of putting out more power than it consumes.

Although fusion is the process behind the power of the sun and an exploding H-bomb, physicists have never been able to achieve a net energy gain in a controlled fusion reaction. But based on the experiments so far, Park thinks there's a chance that it could be done in a sufficiently large Wiffleball reactor, costing on the order of $100 million to $200 million. That sounds like a pretty good deal, especially in comparison with the $3.5 billion that's been spent so far on fusion research at the National Ignition Facility and the $20 billion expected to be spent on the international ITER fusion project.

Driving the fusion Ferrari
WB-8 didn't cost anywhere near that much. Park estimated that the parts alone cost on the order of $2 million, which he compared to the cost of a vintage Ferrari. "I'll take this machine any day over a Ferrari," he joked.

"It's a very nice machine," he said. "I like what we have so far. It's quite well-built, relatively flexible to actually explore a lot of areas and find what's best. Achieving the plasma for fusion is obviously a tall order. ... You don't just push the pedal on a Ferrari and drive the car. Like an F-18 or a stealth bomber, you have to learn how to operate it properly."

Park said that the WB-8 experiment was about 60 percent complete, which roughly matches how much of the $7.9 million has been spent so far. He acknowledged that EMC2 was originally aiming to finish the experiment by this time, but said the realities of government funding — including continuing resolutions, shutdown threats and other budgetary snags — have dictated a slower pace.

"We decided at some point that it's not a good idea to follow the timeline directly, because if you follow the timeline and not the moneyline, you've got a big problem," he told me. "The reality is that we have to follow the timeline given by the funding profile rather than the timeline given by the date."

The last little experiment?
Park figures that the money provided under the WB-8 contract should last until the end of the year, depending on how efficiently the EMC2 team is able to stretch the money out. By then, the engineers in New Mexico and their backers in the Navy should know whether it's worth going ahead with the next step, perhaps even with the big demonstration reactor. Park hopes that WB-8 will be the last small-scale experimental machine EMC2 will have to build.

"This machine should be able to generate 1,000 times more nuclear activity than WB-7, with about eight times more magnetic field," said Park, quoting the publicly available information about WB-8. "We'll call that a good success. That means we're on track with the scaling law."

Don't expect weekly updates about EMC2's progress. "Currently all our funding comes from the Navy," Park said. "That's our customer. Our customer desired that we keep most of our progress confidential. ... They're somewhat concerned about making too much hype without delivering an actual product."

But if WB-8 and the follow-up studies are successful, the Navy won't stand in EMC2's way. 

"Our understanding is they want us to be successful," Park said. "They want us to provide something for our sponsors. They also want us to do well commercially as well, as long as we remain US-owned and control the technology."

And if WB-8 fails?

"Sometimes breakthroughs happen, and sometimes you can never solve it, and then maybe it's time to give up — at least for me," Park said. "But I can positively say I tried everything."

More on the fusion quest:

• From March 2010: Fusion's ups and downs
• Talk-Polywell.org: Discussion forum for IEC fusion
• IEC Fusion Technology: M. Simon's Weblog on the subject
• Next Big Future: Look for the IEC fusion tags
• Fusor.net: Open Source Fusor Research Consortium

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Coal Cares

The Coal Cares campaign claims to offer free "Bieber inhalers" to anyone who lives within 200 miles of a coal plant. The campaign, however, is a hoax.

Who says coal companies are full of hard-hearted folks only interested in the bottom line? At least one titan of the industry, Peabody Energy, cares about youngsters with asthma. It appeared to launch a website Tuesday offering free "Puff Puff" inhalers to anybody living within 200 miles of a coal plant. 

In addition to the re-branded inhalers, which promise to make asthmatic kids "show others who's cool at school," the company will kick in $10 towards medication as a part of its Coal Cares campaign.

The website, coinciding with Asthma Awareness Month, also contains printable activities for the kids. While visiting, you can read up on why investing in coal is a better bet than alternatives such as solar and wind.

"Investing in coal will always be a smart move, especially with well-supported, long-term government subsidies driving down costs, and a near-complete absence of subsidies for so-called 'alternative' energies," the site notes.

This is all, of course, a hoax. 

Peabody, which bills itself as the world's largest private-sector coal company, issued a statement today saying that the "spoof" website makes "inaccurate claims about the company and coal." It then points to studies that "demonstrate the correlation between electricity fueled by low-cost coal and improvement in health, longevity and quality of life." 

What's more, Peabody notes, coal use has more than tripled in the U.S. over the past few decades and regulated emissions have declined 84 percent. As for those unregulated emissions such as carbon dioxide, the company says that it is a "global leader in clean coal solutions."

Update for 3:58 p.m. ET: Fast Company's Morgan Clendaniel reports that the project was the work of a newly formed group called Coal Is Killing Kids, which worked with the Yes Lab for the last month and a half to develop the site. On a blog called "Climate Change: The Next Generation," Tenney Naumer quotes from a CKK news release:

"Sure, it's kind of tasteless to say that 'Bieber' inhalers are a solution to childhood asthma," said Janet Bellamy, a spokesperson for CKK. "But it's a great deal more tasteless to cause that asthma in the first place, as coal-fired power plants have been proven to do." ...

More stories on coal: 

• Children, coal don't mix, China study shows 
• EPA proposes air rules that may hit coal-fired power
• Coal lease sale would open 113M tons to mining 
• Tough times for U.S. coal industry 
• Can concept of clean coal be salvaged? 

Ming Liu / UC Berkeley

Schematic illustration of the graphene-based optical modulator. A layer of graphene (black fishnet) is placed on top of a silicon waveguide (blue), which is used as an optical fiber to guide light. Electric signals sent in from the side of the graphene through gold (Au) and platinum (Pt) electrodes alter the amount of photons the graphene absorbs

Researchers have used graphene, a one-atom thick layer of crystallized carbon, to create a device that could potentially stream high-definition 3-D movies onto a smartphone in a matter of seconds.

The device, a tiny optical modulator, currently switches light on and off. This switching is the fundamental characteristic of a network modulator, which controls how fast data packets are transmitted. The faster the data pulses are sent out, the greater the volume of information that can be sent.

"This is the world's smallest optical modulator, and the modulator in data communications is the heart of speed control," Xiang Zhang, an engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley who led the research, said in a press release.

"Graphene enables us to make modulators that are incredibly compact and that potentially perform at speeds up to ten times faster than current technology allows. The new technology will significantly enhance our capabilities in ultrafast optical communication and computing." 

Prize-worthy material
The device is based on graphene, which was first extracted from graphite — the same material as pencil lead — in 2004 with Scotch tape. This achievement earned Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim at the University of Manchester a Nobel Prize in Physics last year.

Graphene is already being eyed for a range of technologies such as lighter and cheaper body armor, touchscreen displays and chemical sensors. It is the thinnest, strongest crystalline material yet known, can be stretched like rubber and is an excellent conductor of heat and electricity.

Zhang and his colleagues took advantage of the conducting ability, tuning graphene electrically to absorb light in wavelengths used in data communications.

They found that the energy of the electrons, referred to as Fermi level, can be easily altered depending upon the voltage applied to the material. The graphene's Fermi level in turn determines if the light is absorbed or not.

When a sufficient negative voltage is applied, electrons are drawn out of the graphene and are no longer available to absorb photons. The light is switched on because the graphene becomes totally transparent as the photons pass through, UC Berkeley explains.

Graphene is also transparent at certain positive voltages because, in that situation, the electrons become packed so tightly that they cannot absorb the photons. Zhang's team found a sweet spot in the middle where there is just enough voltage applied so the electrons can prevent the photons from passing, effectively switching the light off.

The breakthrough is described online May 8 in Nature.  Xiaobo Yin, co-lead author of the paper and a research scientist in Zhang's lab, described it this way in the press release:

"If graphene were a hallway, and electrons were people, you could say that, when the hall is empty there's no one around to stop the photons. In the other extreme, when the hall is too crowded, people can't move and are ineffective in blocking the photons. It's in between these two scenarios that the electrons are allowed to interact with and absorb the photons and the graphene becomes opaque."

Optical modulator
To create the optical modulator, the team layered graphene on top of a silicon wafer. They were able to achieve a modulation speed of 1 gigahertz, but noted the speed could theoretically reach as high as 500 gigahertz for a single modulator.

Using graphene in this way allows the researchers to scale down technologies that rely on photonics, such as fiber optic lines. The team has already shrunk a graphene-based modulator down to 25 square microns, which is roughly 400 times smaller than a human hair.

Even at this size, graphene can absorb a broad spectrum of light, ranging over thousands of nanometers from ultraviolet to infrared wavelengths. This allows graphene to carry more data than current state-of-the-art modulators, which operate at bandwidths of up to 10 nanometers.

"Instead of broadband, we will have extremeband," Zhang said.

So, yes, that really does mean a high-definition 3-D movie streamed to your smartphone in a matter of seconds.

—Via University of California at Berkeley

More articles on graphene:

• Graphene: Thin stuff is a big fat deal
• For wonder material graphene, Nobel Prize is just the start
• Physicists win Nobel for carbon breakthrough
• Scientists make nanosheets with high-tech potential

Rothamsted Research

Disrupting a mosquito's sense of smell can ward off a bug bite.

Researchers say that they’ve found a new class of chemicals that can drive away mosquitoes by disrupting their odor-sensing system — and the first chemical in that class seems to be thousands of times more effective than DEET.

The compound, called VUAA1, was identified thanks to the kind of high-throughput screening process that is more typically used for drug discovery, said Vanderbilt University professor Laurence Zwiebel, a member of the research team. Zwiebel and his colleagues published their findings online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This compound is really a first-in-class molecule to do this action," Zwiebel told me today.

A mosquito's olfactory system relies on a variety of receptors spread out on the bug's antennae — known odorant receptors, or ORs. The receptors are tuned to respond to different types of odors, including the smell of sweat and blood, and they activate switches called OR co-receptors (Orcos) to tell the mosquito's brain which scent is being picked up.

Researchers screened almost 120,000 small-molecule compounds to check their effects on human embryonic kidney cells that were genetically engineered to include the OR-Orco complexes.  "It was totally a shotgun approach," Zwiebel said. "Throw the kitchen sink at it and see what happens."

The scientists were surprised to find that VUAA1 consistently activated the odor-sensing complexes, even though it's not actually considered an odorant. "It wasn't something we set out to find. It was an anomaly in our tests," another member of the Vanderbilt team, graduate student David Rinker, said in a news release.

"If a compound like VUAA1 can activate every mosquito odorant receptor at once, then it could overwhelm the insect's sense of smell, creating a repellent effect akin to stepping onto an elevator with someone wearing too much perfume, except this would be far worse for the mosquito," said Patrick Jones, a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt who is the study's first author. 

Zwiebel said that he and his colleagues compared the effectiveness of VUAA1 with that of the widely used DEET insect repellant by measuring how much of each compound it took to repel larval mosquitoes in a petri dish. "The more you use, the more the mosquito moves, as if it's trying to get out of Dodge," he explained. A tiny amount of VUAA1 had the same repellent effect as a concentration of DEET that was tens of thousands of times stronger, Zwiebel said.

However, Zwiebel stressed that VUAA1 isn't yet ready for prime time. "The commercialization of this compound has hardly begun," he said. The chemical still has to be fine-tuned and checked for toxicity, and it's possible that other chemicals in the same class will turn out to be more effective or safer. Vanderbilt University says it has filed for a patent on this class of chemicals and is talking with potential corporate licensees about commercialization, with special focus on the development of products to reduce the spread of malaria in the developing world.

Zwiebel noted that VUAA1 has been found to activate the odor-sensing complexes of flies, moths and ants as well. "Basically, every insect that has an olfactory system has this Orco ion channel," he told me. "We have an expectation that every insect will be affected by this molecule. Now, that's both good and bad."

It's good, because the new class of chemicals may yield new ways to drive away other types of nuisance insects and agricultural pests. But it'd be bad if they also drove away beneficial bugs such as bees and butterflies.

"We've all read 'Silent Spring,'" Zwiebel said. "We don't want to have the same DDT story."

More about mosquitoes:

• Scientists tweak mosquito genes to fight malaria
• A malaria mosquito is quickly becoming two species
• Scientists find natural mosquito repellent
• Researchers studying better insect repellents
• U.N.: Efforts on track to halt malaria deaths

In addition to Jones, Rinker and Zwiebel, authors of "Functional Agonism of Insect Odorant Receptor Ion Channels" include Gregory M. Pask. VUAA1 stands for Vanderbilt University Allosteric Agonist 1. The research was supported by the Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative, funded by the Foundation for the NIH through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA

An artist's conception shows astronauts practicing for asteroid exploration on an underwater rock wall.

A NASA team is going underwater this week in the Florida Keys to lay the groundwork for the space agency's first simulated journey to an asteroid.

Sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid ranks as one of the top goals for NASA's retooled vision for space exploration. A year ago, President Barack Obama told NASA to gear up to take on such a mission by the year 2025. Up to that time, NASA had been focusing on a return to the moon — which means that the agency had to retool its mission plans. This week's engineering tests, organized by NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, or NEEMO, will help NASA get ready to set off for its new target.

"Even experts don't know what the surface of an asteroid is going to be like," NEEMO project manager Bill Todd said today in a news release. "There may be asteroids that we don't even know about that we'll be visiting. So we're figuring out the best way to do that."

The center of this week's operations is the Aquarius Underwater Laboratory near Key Largo, Fla. "We are now trying to understand the nuts and bolts of what it might take to do a spacewalk on an asteroid or on the moons of Mars," NASA astronaut Mike Gernhardt, a member of the NEEMO team, told me today.

The underwater team isn't working from the Aquarius habitat itself. That part of the simulation will come later. Instead, Gernhardt and his NEEMO teammates are jumping off the deck of a ship, heading down to depths of about 60 feet in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, and practicing their spacewalking skills on an assortment of boulders and rock walls.

"We've created our own mini-asteroid under the water," Gernhardt said.

The aim is to determine which tools and techniques work best for asteroid exploration. NASA has gotten quite familiar with microgravity operations on the International Space Station, and traveling around the moon or Mars doesn't pose all that much of a challenge, gravity-wise. In a sense, making your way around an asteroid combines the worst of both worlds: Most asteroids are so small, it's virtually like working in zero-G. But unlike the space station, there are no built-in handholds or railings. "We have no control over what this asteroid looks like," Gernhardt said.

NASA

In this illustration, astronauts on a Space Exploration Vehicle nestle up against an asteroid and use jetpacks to move around the surface.

NASA

In this artist's conception, an astronaut uses a network of anchors and tethers to move across an asteroid.

Should astronauts hammer in anchors as they make their way across an asteroid's surface? Should they be anchored to a boom stretching out from their spaceship? Or should they use jetpacks to fly freely just a few inches away from the asteroid? Gernhardt and his colleagues will be trying out all three techniques.

"What we're trying to do is fill in the thousand bits of knowledge to bring this from the artist's concepts to reality," he said.

Here are some of the tools the NEEMO team is testing:

• A 27-foot-long, 300-pound boom that could telescope out from a spaceship (or, for the purposes of the simulation, from a piloted submersible) and lock onto a rocky surface.
• A smaller, 20-pound boom that can be anchored at either end, to be used like a handrail to help get around the surface being explored.
• A dual-thruster backpack that can be used underwater to simulate how a jetpack like NASA's current SAFER system would work in outer space.
• Soil-sampling aids, such as a clamshell grabbag that can scoop up samples, and a large plastic bag that can be stretched over rock outcroppings to keep chipped-off samples from floating away.

"Some of the tools that we developed probably won't work very well at all, but as we work down there we'll probably get ideas for better ways to do things," Gernhardt said.

The knowledge gained during this week's tests will be applied to the planning for a full-up mission simulation in October. That's when NASA's "aquanauts" will take up residence in the Aquarius habitat and practice going out in submersibles to explore underwater asteroids. Mission planners will apply the lessons learned in the Florida Keys in other training environments, including NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, Air Bearing Floor and virtual-reality lab as well as the International Space Station.

"It's a bittersweet moment as we wind down the shuttle and the space program as we've known it for the past 30 years," Gernhardt said. But he takes some consolation in the fact that the effort being devoted to NEEMO will pay off on the space station and on other worlds, ranging from near-Earth asteroids to the moon and Mars.

"It's exciting to be working with this great team that we've put together here to develop the tools for future space exploration," Gernhardt said. To keep up with this week's activities, check in with this NEEMO webcast as well as the @NASA_NEEMO Twitter account and the NEEMO Facebook page.

More about asteroids and aquanauts:

• Asteroid goal is riskier than the moon
• Gallery: Seven out-of-this-world destinations
• First step for asteroid mission: Pick the right rock
• Undersea lab serves as inner-space station

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

University of Maryland

A human-powered helicopter, called Gamera, has a rotor at each of the four ends of its X-shaped frame, with the pilot's module suspended from the middle.

On Wednesday, Judy Wexler will pedal furiously, hoping to generate the force needed to lift a human-powered helicopter off the ground and win a $250,000 prize.

The biology student at the University of Maryland is a competitive cyclist with a desirable power-to-weight ratio and endurance, noted Brandon Bush, a graduate student in the university's school of engineering and project team member.

The X-shaped helicopter, called Gamera, has 42-foot diameter rotors at each end of 60-foot long crossbars. A pilot's module is suspended from the middle.

Wexler will be pedaling with her feet and hands, hoping to generate enough lift to get off the ground. "We want to take advantage of every single piece of power we can get out of our pilot," Bush told me Monday.

The structure is made of balsa, foam, Mylar, carbon fiber and other lightweight materials and weighs about 100 pounds, about the same weight as Wexler.

If the helicopter stays aloft for at least 60 seconds and reaches a height of 10 feet, the team will capture the $250,000 Sikorsky Prize, an X-prize like contest for human-powered helicopters.

Bush said winning the prize isn't in their crosshairs for the Wednesday test flight, rather just getting the craft and pilot off the ground for a minute, which will require sustaining nearly 1 horsepower of power for the duration.

"Humans have this tendency to put out a lot of power at the beginning and then their ability to sustain that power rapidly drops off with time," he noted.

Wexler, they hope, can keep the pace up for a full minute, but reaching an altitude of 10 feet is another challenge that will likely require some redesigning based on results from the test flights.

"We have a lot of ideas that should be able to get us there, for instance taking advantage of that initial spike in energy that humans have and maybe hop up to [10 feet] and then float down over the 60 seconds for the hover," he said.

The University of Maryland will live stream Wednesday's test between 9 a.m. and 12 a.m. ET. Click here to check it out.

John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

Ralph O. Schill / ESA

A tardigrade, also known as a water bear, measures less than a millimeter (0.04 inch) in length but can withstand harsh environments and still thrive. The water bears are the stars of the show for the Planetary Society's Shuttle LIFE experiment on the shuttle Endeavour.

The eight-legged water bears have had to go back to the lab, and the energy bars better have a longer shelf life. But the big-ticket science item for the shuttle Endeavour's mission to the International Space Station, the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, is just fine where it's at. We've heard a lot about the space spectrometer, which could crack the mysteries of antimatter and dark matter. but there are scores of smaller, quirkier experiments due to ride on Endeavour's final trip, whenever it happens.

Here are a few of the quirkier scientific and educational payloads:

Planetary Society

Bill Nye ("The Science Guy"), executive director of the Planetary Society, holds one of the microbe-filled Shuttle LIFE tubes with a set of tweezers.

Shuttle LIFE: The nonprofit Planetary Society is putting six types of microbes inside sealed tubes that will fly on Endeavour's middeck. The critters include eight-legged water bears, also known as tardigrades; Deinococcus radiodurans, one of the most radiation-resistant microbes known on Earth; Bacillus subtilis, a garden-variety strain of bacteria; Cupriavidus metallidurans, a type of bacteria that gobbles up heavy metals; the salt-loving microbe known as Haloarcula marismortui; and Pyrococcus furiosus, a critter that can withstand temperatures above 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius).

Sounds like the Planetary Society just recruited a League of Extraordinary Extremophiles.

The idea is to study how microbes that are adapted to different extreme environments on Earth do in the zero-G space environment. Planetary Society's Bruce Betts says this experiment is a "wet run" for a similar experiment that will fly on Phobos-Grunt, a Russian-Chinese mission due for launch to the Martian moon Phobos within the next year.

"It's like a dry run, but we actually get real science while we're at it," Betts told me.

After NASA postponed last week's scheduled launch of Endeavour, the Shuttle LIFE experiment was pulled off the shuttle along with other experiments on the middeck. Fresh tubes will go to the launch pad a couple of days before liftoff. "The good news for our experiment is that it's not much of an impact," Betts said. If these microbes can survive super-radiation and blazing temperatures, they should be able to handle a week or two hanging around the lab.

Student experiments: NASA has made room for several experiments set up by students, including one that studies seed germination in space and another that looks at the effects of microgravity on squid embryos. Then there's the STEM Bar, which will be flying on Endeavour as the result of a competition sponsored by the Conrad Foundation. STEM stands for "science, technology, engineering and mathematics," and the nutritional grain bar's creators hope that the space spotlight will help get kids back on Earth interested in STEM education.

The bar is made from oats, puffed rice and dried fruits, and has gone through NASA's space-food certification process for orbital consumption. One of the bar's developers, 15-year-old Shannon Diesch of the Battle Creek Area Mathematics and Science Center in Michigan, told me that such energy bars are among "the favorite things to eat up there" on the space station.

She and her 16-year-old sister, Mikayla, were at Kennedy Space Center for last week's launch attempt and gave me one of the bars for sampling. After leaving it in my suitcase for a week, to simulate the rigors of spaceflight, I shared the STEM Bar with three of my sweets-loving crewmates at the office. The verdict? Thumbs-up from all four of us.

ASI via NASA

The camera-equipped Astronaut Personal Eye is designed to float in zero-gravity and follow astronauts around, or serve as a remote-controlled eye in outer space.

Astronaut Personal Eye: One of the most James Bond-ish of the experiments is a "micro-aircraft" that could eventually follow astronauts around as they go about their activities inside or outside the space station. The camera-equipped, gyro-stabilized, thruster-powered gadget can be remote-controlled by an astronaut, to serve as a "personal eye" for observation. But NASA's info sheet on the device notes that problems may pop up: "In fact, the space environment may cause catastrophic events on micro-electronic components and devices, due to shocks and vibrations, high temperatures, ionizing radiations and electromagnetic fields." Be careful what you do with that thing, commander!

Lego bricks: Yes, those famous snap-together toys are due to go up on Endeavour, under the terms of an educational partnership between NASA and the Denmark-based Lego company. Astronauts will assemble a Lego workbench as well as a model of the space shuttle and the space station. NASA astronaut Cady Coleman has been designated as the first to take on the task, after getting some training from her 10-year-old son. The space-themed Lego kits are going on sale here on Earth this year.

Asian Seed: Japan's space agency is sending up a package of plant seeds that will be stored in the space station's Japanese Kibo laboratory for a month, and then sent back down to Earth for use in educational kits and gifts. The concept sounds similar to the "moon trees" that were grown from seeds taken into space by Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa in 1971. The locations for hundreds of those trees are currently unknown. Let's just hope the Japanese keep better track of where all their space seeds end up.

Update for 1:15 p.m. ET May 7: Pyrococcus furiosus can indeed survive temperatures above 100 degrees C, but I originally wrote that this was above water's boiling point. Which it would be at sea level. But in the deep-sea environment where the microbe lives, the pressures are so great that water does not boil at those temperatures. Thanks to Jonathan Eisen for pointing that out.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Space Adventures

An artist's conception shows a Russian-built propulsion module and habitation module at left, linked up with a Soyuz spacecraft at right to create a complex designed for flying around the moon and back to Earth.

Want to be the first person to go around the moon in four decades? It may already be too late. Space Adventures says one client has made a reservation for a circumlunar flight, and the company is in negotiations to sell the second and last open seat for as much as $150 million.

Eric Anderson, the Virginia-based company's chairman, provided fresh details about the round-the-moon mission today during a briefing to mark the 10th anniversary of the first tourist flight to the International Space Station, as well as the 50th anniversary of NASA's first manned spaceflight.

It's been known for some time that one well-heeled customer had signed up for the mission, which would include launch in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, a 10-day stay on the space station, a 3.5-day trip to slingshot around the moon and a 3.5-day return to Earth. But Anderson said he was "hopeful that a contract will be signed ... by the end of the year" for a second customer. That would fill out the mission's crew, which would be headed by a professional astronaut flying in the Soyuz's third seat.

If the scenario works out the way Anderson hopes, the three-person crew would make the trip by the end of 2015. He compared the adventure to California millionaire Dennis Tito's trip to the space station in 2001.

"The mission, in my mind, will be another watershed event," he said. "It's remarkable that a private company will be able to work in the market and finance what is likely to be humanity's first return to the moon in what will, at that time, be 45 years."

When the circumlunar trip was first offered in 2005, the price tag was $100 million. But since then, Anderson noted that the cost of Soyuz seats has gone up, due to currency adjustments and inflation as well as the fact that the Russians currently enjoy a monopoly when it comes to orbital passenger service. "The fact of the matter is that the price could realistically be $120 million per person, and it could be up to $150 million per person," he said.

The customer who has signed up already is planning to do more than just gaze out the window, although Anderson wouldn't get into the specifics. He said only that the mission "is something that is going to address an issue and a concept that is of great importance to the world."

"It will be something that captivates a lot of people," he said. "I really do look forward to our ability to announce that."

In addition to talking about the customers, Anderson revealed more about the Russians' plan for the round-the-moon flight: In addition to the Soyuz, a Block-DM upper stage and an extra habitation module would be launched into orbit. After the Soyuz finishes up its zero-G familiarization visit to the International Space Station, it would dock with the other modules, forming a complex capable of taking on the seven-day circumlunar odyssey.

The addition of the habitation module's 18 cubic meters of volume "basically doubles the size of the Soyuz on the inside," Anderson said.

"You can think of it in many ways as your miniature space station that you take along with you," said Richard Garriott, a millionaire video-game developer who took a trip to the space station in 2008 and now serves as Space Adventures' vice chairman.

Anderson said there would "certainly be a test flight" before paying passengers are brought aboard. That test would come a few months to a year before the big-money flight. "Whether it's an unmanned or manned flight is yet to be decided," Anderson said.

Today's briefing was an opportunity for Anderson and Garriott to reflect on the past, present and future of space tourism, 10 years after Tito's then-controversial visit to the International Space Station. Six people have followed in Tito's expensive footsteps, and one of those six — software billionaire Charles Simonyi — has gone twice. All eight flights have been accommodated on Russian spacecraft, with Space Adventures serving as a broker. The going rate for 10-day trips to the space station has risen from an estimated $20 million in Tito's day to $40 million or more today.

Anderson said he expects the price to stay in the range of $20 million to $50 million for the next decade. Based on an analysis of the market, he also expects 140 people to purchase trips into orbit between now and 2020 — either to the International Space Station, or to one of two commercial space stations. Anderson speculated that one station would be backed by a U.S. commercial entity, while the other would be backed by the Russians. (The likeliest U.S.-based suspect is Bigelow Aerospace, which has already launched two test modules and plans to put another inflatable module into orbit by around 2014.)

Anderson said Space Adventures' analysis, which was prepared for NASA and the Boeing Co., does not count NASA astronauts or other government-supported spacefliers among the 140 projected customers. Space Adventures is hoping to get a healthy share of that private market, either by working with the Russians or by selling seats on Boeing's planned CST-100 orbital crew capsule.

Here are a few other highlights from the briefing:

• If private space companies developed truly reusable spacecraft for orbital trips, "that could be a game-changer," bringing down the cost of passenger space travel significantly, Anderson said.
• Anderson said Russia's space agency is planning to build a next-generation space vehicle capable of carrying four to six people to orbit. That spaceship could be ready by "2017 or so," he said.
• Anderson estimated that about 150 to 200 people were on Space Adventures' list for suborbital spaceflights. Space Adventures is working with Armadillo Aerospace to develop a craft that could take passengers on suborbital space rides for $102,000. Other players in the suborbital space market include Virgin Galactic, XCOR Aerospace and Blue Origin.
• Although Anderson is generally loath to identify future orbital spacefliers, he made an exception today: "There's at least one person who will plan on flying into orbit in the next decade, and that’s me," he said.

How about you? Feel free to reflect on the future of private spaceflight in the comment section below.

More about private spaceflight:

• How space tourism could see an orbital boom
• Private spaceflight is ready to take off in 2011
• Ten high-profile players in the new space race
• SpaceX shoots for the 'next big thing'

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