Science

NASA said today it would launch a spacecraft that would for the first time test fire green propellant technology in space.

NASA’s Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM) will use a small satellite using a Hydroxyl Ammonium Nitrate fuel/oxidizer mix, developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory, is also is known as AF-M315E propellant. This fuel may replace the highly toxic hydrazine and complex bi-propellant systems in-use today, NASA said.

The human body has the potential for amazing feats, but it also has built-in limitations — we can’t hear certain tones, we see a limited range of colors, and we can’t feel magnetic and electrical fields around us the way some animals do.

Some people choose not to accept those limits.

While some suggest that flexible work arrangements have the potential to reduce workplace inequality, a new study finds these arrangements may exacerbate discrimination based on parental status and gender.

Study author Christin Munsch, an assistant professor of sociology at Furman University, analyzed the reactions both men and women received when making flexible work requests—meaning that they either asked to work from home or to work non-traditional hours.

I hadn't been aware that, if you ask NASA nicely, you'll be allowed to take the controls of a satellite floating in outer space.

Clearly, I need to get out more, as this is what a group of very interested civilians are doing from their headquarters in a McDonald's.

Let's be fair, it's an old McDonald's. It doesn't serve burgers anymore. Indeed, as Betabeat reports, it's now referred to as McMoon's. From here, Keith Cowing, a former NASA employee who hasn't lost his enthusiasm for space, huddles with his team to re-create the joy of satellites gone by.

A sleep monitoring device has passed the $1.3 million mark on Kickstarter in its first week, with the final forecast expected to be around $4 million when the project ends in 22 days time.

The sleek-looking device called Sense, which was launched by James Proud last week, only had an original Kickstarter goal of raising $100,000 within 30 days, but great word of mouth from many tech sites has already produced a backing of over ten times that figure.

The Chinese city of Yumen in Gansu province in China was sealed off Tuesday for nine days (ending today) after a man died of bubonic plague,  South China Post reports, based on a report by China Central Television.

“Other reports said the 38-year-old victim had come across a dead marmot on July 13. He is said to have chopped it up to feed to his dog, but developed a fever the same day.

Last year, a child born with HIV was revealed to be "functionally cured" thanks to the administration of a liquid antiretroviral almost immediately following her birth. Unfortunately, the National Institutes of Health have just announced that the so-called "Mississippi Baby" is now showing detectable levels of the HIV virus some two years after she was taken off of the drug regimen with no detectible levels of the virus.

A blood test for Alzheimer's might be just two years away.

Abdul Hye at King's College London and his colleagues have identified 10 proteins in blood that can predict who will develop Alzheimer's disease a year after having mild memory problems. Its accuracy is almost 90 per cent. That could prove a huge boost for researchers seeking treatments.

In the summer of 2010, Ryan Clark twisted his ankle during a gym class. It was painful, but inconvenient more than anything. He was put on crutches for a week and his ankle healed. Then, six weeks later, the pain returned—only this time, it was a lot worse. Ryan ended up in a wheelchair, unable to bear the agony of walking. Drugs and rehab helped and after six weeks or so he recovered. Then he injured himself again, and a third time, each minor accident triggering pain that became horrendous.

True hardware hackers and makers in the open-source movement create for the joy of creation itself, but they probably wouldn't turn down a free trip to space as a reward for their ingenuity, either.