A Bimodal Science Measurements for Earth Remote Sensing on a 3U CubeSat Platform

Solar energetic events, which include solar flares and solar mass ejections affect the Earth\u27s atmosphere. While solar energetic events have been observed to influence the chemistry of the mesospheric ozone, a comprehensive collection of quantitative data detailing the frequency, energy, and intensity of these interactions with the mesosphere have, to our knowledge, not before been collected. High-energy charged particles from solar energetic events can ionize molecules found within the mesosphere, accelerating the formation rate of reactive hydrogen atoms and nitrogen oxides. This results in reactions that catalyze the conversion of ozone back into diatomic oxygen. The Variability in Atmosphere – Solar Energetic Event study (VIA-SEEs) mission intends to utilize a 3U-CubeSat in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to establish a singular data set for the purpose of understanding the correlation between flux in solar energetic events and variability in total reactive nitrogen oxides (NOy) and ozone (O3) concentrations in the mesosphere. This mission intends to produce a unique data set using a bimodal measurement scheme involving two instruments – one Variability in Atmosphere (VIA) commercial-off-the-shelf spectrophotometer for measuring NOy and O3 concentrations, and one in-house designed and fabricated solid-state radiation detector for observing the energy and flux of solar energetic electrons and protons

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead