Naval Postgraduate School NPSAT1 Small Satellite

Paper presented at the ESA Small Satellite Systems and Services SymposiumThe NPSAT1 mission, conceived and developed by the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Space Systems Academic Group (SSAG), is sponsored and executed by the DoD Space Test Program (SMC SDD). The small satellite is manifested for launch aboard the STP-1 Atlas V Mission due to launch in December 2006. The main objective of the NPSAT1 program is to provide educational opportunities for the offi cer students in the Space Systems Curricula at NPS through the design, testing, integration, and fl ight operations of a small satellite. The 82 kg (180 lbs) satellite will be earth-pointing using a novel, low-cost, 3-axis attitude control scheme. NPSAT1 will provide a platform for a number of spacecraft technology experiments, including a lithium-ion battery, a confi gurable, fault-tolerant processor (CFTP) experiment, and fl ight demonstrations of commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) components such as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) rate sensors and a digital camera. The spacecraft command and data handling (C&DH) subsystem is NPS-designed, featuring low-power with error-detection-and-correction (EDAC) memory, an ARM720T microprocessor, and running Linux as the operating system. Two other experiments are provided by the Naval Research Laboratory to investigate ionospheric physics. This paper presents an overview of the spacecraft, its subsystems, and the challenges of a small satellite program in a university environment.Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California

In Situ Probes of the First Galaxies and Reionization: Gamma-ray Bursts

The first structures in the Universe formed at z>7, at higher redshift than all currently known galaxies. Since GRBs are brighter than other cosmological sources at high redshift and exhibit simple power-law afterglow spectra that is ideal for absorption studies, they serve as powerful tools for studying the early universe. New facilities planned for the coming decade will be able to obtain a large sample of high-redshift GRBs. Such a sample would constrain the nature of the first stars, galaxies, and the reionization history of the Universe.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, science white paper submitted to the US Astro2010 Decadal Surve

Anti-fibrotic potential of Tomentosenol A, a constituent of cerumen from the Australian native stingless bee, Tetragonula carbonaria

Bioactivity-guided fractionation was used to isolate two compounds, tomentosenol A (1) and torellianone A (2), from a cerumen extract from Tetragonula carbonaria. The anti-fibrotic activity of these compounds was examined using human cultured neonatal foreskin fibroblasts (NFF) and immortalised keratinocytes (HaCaTs). Tomentosenol A (1), inhibited NFF and HaCaT cell proliferation and prevented NFF and HaCaT scratch wound repopulation at 12.5−25 µM concentrations. These inhibitory effects were associated with reduced cell viability, determined by tetrazolium dye (MTT) and sulforhodamine B (SRB) assays. Compound 1 further inhibited transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1)-stimulated, NFF-myofibroblast differentiation and soluble collagen production; and was an effective scavenger of the model oxidant, 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH·), with an EC50 value of 44.7 ± 3.1 µM. These findings reveal significant anti-fibrotic potential for cerumen-derived tomentosenol A (1)

The \u3cem\u3eChlamydomonas\u3c/em\u3e Genome Reveals the Evolution of Key Animal and Plant Functions

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a unicellular green alga whose lineage diverged from land plants over 1 billion years ago. It is a model system for studying chloroplast-based photosynthesis, as well as the structure, assembly, and function of eukaryotic flagella (cilia), which were inherited from the common ancestor of plants and animals, but lost in land plants. We sequenced the ∼120-megabase nuclear genome of Chlamydomonas and performed comparative phylogenomic analyses, identifying genes encoding uncharacterized proteins that are likely associated with the function and biogenesis of chloroplasts or eukaryotic flagella. Analyses of the Chlamydomonas genome advance our understanding of the ancestral eukaryotic cell, reveal previously unknown genes associated with photosynthetic and flagellar functions, and establish links between ciliopathy and the composition and function of flagella

Demonstrating a superconducting dual-rail cavity qubit with erasure-detected logical measurements

A critical challenge in developing scalable error-corrected quantum systems is the accumulation of errors while performing operations and measurements. One promising approach is to design a system where errors can be detected and converted into erasures. A recent proposal aims to do this using a dual-rail encoding with superconducting cavities. In this work, we implement such a dual-rail cavity qubit and use it to demonstrate a projective logical measurement with erasure detection. We measure logical state preparation and measurement errors at the $0.01\%$-level and detect over $99\%$ of cavity decay events as erasures. We use the precision of this new measurement protocol to distinguish different types of errors in this system, finding that while decay errors occur with probability $\sim 0.2\%$ per microsecond, phase errors occur 6 times less frequently and bit flips occur at least 170 times less frequently. These findings represent the first confirmation of the expected error hierarchy necessary to concatenate dual-rail erasure qubits into a highly efficient erasure code

Formin1 Mediates the Induction of Dendritogenesis and Synaptogenesis by Neurogenin3 in Mouse Hippocampal Neurons

Neurogenin3, a proneural transcription factor controlled by Notch receptor, has been recently shown to regulate dendritogenesis and synaptogenesis in mouse hippocampal neurons. However, little is known about the molecular mechanisms involved in these actions of Ngn3. We have used a microarray analysis to identify Ngn3 regulated genes related with cytoskeleton dynamics. One of such genes is Fmn1, whose protein, Formin1, is associated with actin and microtubule cytoskeleton. Overexpression of the Fmn1 isoform-Ib in cultured mouse hippocampal neurons induced an increase in the number of primary dendrites and in the number of glutamatergic synaptic inputs at 4 days in vitro. The same changes were provoked by overexpression of Ngn3. In addition downregulation of Fmn1 by the use of Fmn1-siRNAs impaired such morphological and synaptic changes induced by Ngn3 overexpression in neurons. These results reveal a previously unknown involvement of Formin1 in dendritogenesis and synaptogenesis and indicate that this protein is a key component of the Ngn3 signaling pathway that controls neuronal differentiation

Genetic Control of a Central Pattern Generator: Rhythmic Oromotor Movement in Mice Is Controlled by a Major Locus near Atp1a2

Fluid licking in mice is a rhythmic behavior that is controlled by a central pattern generator (CPG) located in a complex of brainstem nuclei. C57BL/6J (B6) and DBA/2J (D2) strains differ significantly in water-restricted licking, with a highly heritable difference in rates (h2≥0.62) and a corresponding 20% difference in interlick interval (mean ± SEM = 116.3±1 vs 95.4±1.1 ms). We systematically quantified motor output in these strains, their F1 hybrids, and a set of 64 BXD progeny strains. The mean primary interlick interval (MPI) varied continuously among progeny strains. We detected a significant quantitative trait locus (QTL) for a CPG controlling lick rate on Chr 1 (Lick1), and a suggestive locus on Chr 10 (Lick10). Linkage was verified by testing of B6.D2-1D congenic stock in which a segment of Chr 1 of the D2 strain was introgressed onto the B6 parent. The Lick1 interval on distal Chr 1 contains several strong candidate genes. One of these is a sodium/potassium pump subunit (Atp1a2) with widespread expression in astrocytes, as well as in a restricted population of neurons. Both this subunit and the entire Na+/K+-ATPase molecule have been implicated in rhythmogenesis for respiration and locomotion. Sequence variants in or near Apt1a2 strongly modulate expression of the cognate mRNA in multiple brain regions. This gene region has recently been sequenced exhaustively and we have cataloged over 300 non-coding and synonymous mutations segregating among BXD strains, one or more of which is likely to contribute to differences in central pattern generator tempo

Phylogenomic analysis of the Chlamydomonas genome unmasks proteins potentially involved in photosynthetic function and regulation

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a unicellular green alga, has been exploited as a reference organism for identifying proteins and activities associated with the photosynthetic apparatus and the functioning of chloroplasts. Recently, the full genome sequence of Chlamydomonas was generated and a set of gene models, representing all genes on the genome, was developed. Using these gene models, and gene models developed for the genomes of other organisms, a phylogenomic, comparative analysis was performed to identify proteins encoded on the Chlamydomonas genome which were likely involved in chloroplast functions (or specifically associated with the green algal lineage); this set of proteins has been designated the GreenCut. Further analyses of those GreenCut proteins with uncharacterized functions and the generation of mutant strains aberrant for these proteins are beginning to unmask new layers of functionality/regulation that are integrated into the workings of the photosynthetic apparatus

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure