(NASA)

The search for life beyond our own solar system has taken a major step forward with a new interdisciplinary research coalition devoted to the search for life in the cosmos.

Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) will be made up of research teams from several NASA facilities, 10 U.S. universities and two research institutions, according to a recent NASA announcement.

Research teams were picked from proposals submitted to the four various divisions that make-up the space agency’s Science Mission Directorate.

NExSS experts will search for life in the cosmos by studying various aspects of a extra solar planet or exoplanet, as well as how the planet’s star and neighboring worlds all act together to support life.

NASA said NExSS researchers will be better equipped to look for life on extrasolar planets if they gain a better understanding of how biology interacts with various components of an exoplanet, such as its interior, atmosphere, geology and ocean, and how its host star affects these interactions.

“This interdisciplinary endeavor connects top research teams and provides a synthesized approach in the search for planets with the greatest potential for signs of life,” said Jim Green, NASA’s Director of Planetary Science in a press release.

Artist rendering of 51 Pegasi b the first discovered exoplanet.  (Calista Francais/Kirk39/Wikimedia Commons)

He said “the hunt for exoplanets is not only a priority for astronomers, it’s of keen interest to planetary and climate scientists as well.”

As more and more planets are found in solar systems beyond our own, researchers have been working on scientific methods that would not only allow them to confirm whether the alien planets are suitable to host life, but also help them look for specific biosignatures that point to the presence of life on these planets.

Experts from the four divisions of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate will provide NExSS with guidance and knowledge in the areas of Earth Science, Planetary Science, Helieophysics and Astrophysics. And NExSS team members will study and classify newly discovered exoplanets, determine if they are possibly habitable, and develop the needed tools and technologies to find life beyond our own planet.

“NExSS scientists will not only apply a systems science approach to existing exoplanet data, their work will provide a foundation for interpreting observations of exoplanets from future exoplanet missions such as TESS, JWST, and WFIRST,” noted Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, Washington.

The TESS or Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission is scheduled for a 2017 launch date. The JWST or James Webb Space Telescope – Hubble’s replacement – is set to be launched in 2018.  And NASA is now studying the WFIRST or Wide-field Infrared Survey Telescope which they hope to launch sometime in the 2020s.

The first extrasolar planet was discovered only 20 years ago when 51 Pegasi b was found orbiting 51Pegasi, a main sequence star much like our own Sun, some 50 light years away.

After NASA’s Kepler space telescope went into operation in May 2009, scientists were able to confirm the existence of more than 1,800 exoplanets.

Thousands more await confirmation.

Yellowstone National Park’s Grand Prismatic hot spring are among the park’s many hydrothermal features. (Robert B. Smith & Lee J. Siegel)

Yellowstone National Park’s many geothermal features, including its estimated 10,000 hot springs and geysers, draw millions of visitors each year.

There’s good reason why the approximately 8,983 square km park has such a high level of geothermal activity. You see, the park sits atop one of the world’s largest active volcanic systems.

According to the US Geological Survey, Yellowstone’s supervolcano exploded with three cataclysmic volcanic eruptions over the past 2.1 million years. The most recent took place about 640,000 years ago.

Scientists say those three catastrophic Yellowstone supervolcano eruptions covered much of North America in volcanic ash. A similar eruption today would be equally devastating, according to researchers.

Today, a number of people – possibly inspired by a few conspiracy theories and docudrama television programs – are concerned that a significant and catastrophic eruption of Yellowstone’s supervolcano is imminent.

And seismologists from the University of Utah have made a new discovery that may add to these concerns.

This cross-section illustration – cutting southwest-northeast under Yelowstone – depicts the supervolcano’s “plumbing system” as revealed by recent seismic imaging. (Hsin-Hua Huang, University of Utah)

The scientists said they discovered and made images of a reservoir of hot and partially molten rock located about 19 to 45 km below the Yellowstone supervolcano. The researchers added that this reservoir is about 4.4 times larger than the long-known and shallower magma chamber above.

According to Jamie Farrell, a co-author of a study published in the journal Science, the reservoir of hot rock would fill the 4,168 cubic kilometer Grand Canyon 11.2 times. The magma chamber above it was calculated to fill the Grand Canyon 2.5 times.

“For the first time, we have imaged the continuous volcanic plumbing system under Yellowstone,” said the study’s first author Hsin-Hua Huang, a postdoctoral researcher in geology and geophysics, in a press release.

“That includes the upper crustal magma chamber we have seen previously plus a lower crustal magma reservoir that has never been imaged before and that connects the upper chamber to the Yellowstone hotspot plume below,” he added.

To allay any fears that the Yellowstone volcano is about to blow up, the seismologists emphasized that its “plumbing system” is neither larger nor is it any closer to erupting than before.

Robert Smith, a research and emeritus professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah, took this a step further, saying the annual chance of the supervolcano erupting is 1 in 700,000.

One of the most popular hydrothermal features at Yellowstone park is the geyser Old Faithful, shown here during one of its regular eruptions. (Jon Sullivan/Wikimedia Commons)

The researchers also stressed that contrary to what many people may think, the magma chamber beneath the Yellowstone supervolcano and the magma reservoir beneath that are not bubbling with molten rock. While the rock material is hot, the researchers said it’s mostly solid and spongy, with only pockets of molten rock within it.

The hot rock in the upper magma chamber contains an average of about nine percent molten rock, according to researchers’ calculations. That is pretty much in line with past estimates of between 5-15 percent of molten rock in that chamber. The researchers also found that the contents in the lower magma reservoir are made of about two percent of melted rock.

Study co-author Fan-Chi Lin, assistant professor of geology and geophysics, said that the new research is providing a “better understanding the Yellowstone magmatic system.”

“We can now use these new models to better estimate the potential seismic and volcanic hazards,” he said.

A series of facial movements that are used when pronouncing phrases listed on the right (Disney Research)

Sixteen days after its April 3, 2015 release, the new American action film “Furious 7” made a whopping $858.3 million in international markets, compared to a more modest $294.4 million in North America. Movie and television programs companies have taken notice and are aggressively marketing their products to a wide international audience.

But reaching an international audience means the film’s dialog must often be dubbed by actors speaking local languages.

Current methods of dubbing dialogue to match the on screen facial movements of the person talking as closely as possible often come across as terribly disjointed. That makes for an unpleasant movie viewing experience for the audience.

Given such a lucrative international market, filmmakers are taking extraordinary steps to ensure that the translated version’s sound matches the facial movements of onscreen actors as closely to as possible.

Disney Research, Pittsburgh and the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia have conducted studies that they said will help in the development an automated dialogue re-dubbing system that will make movies more enjoyable for people who speak the languages spoken by international audiences.

This is a movie dubbing studio where dialogue is translated and revoiced into other languages and then dubbed into movies set for international release. (arceus555 via Creative Commons)

The new system, developed by a team led by Sarah Taylor at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, automatically analyzes the on screen actor’s speech. It then allows film producers to reduce or in some cases eliminate even the most subtle differences between words spoken on screen and what the audience hears.

The system is based on something called “dynamic visemes,” which are facial movements that are connected with certain sounds produced in speech.

“The method using dynamic visemes produces many more plausible alternative word sequences that are perceivably better than those produced using a static viseme approaches,” Taylor said in a press release.

The system will provide filmmakers with a wider variety of word sequences that match facial movements.  This will allow producers to write local language dialogue that not only corresponds with the movie’s script, but also ensures that on-screen facial movements are more in synchronization with what the audience hears.

As an example, the researchers found that when an actor says a phrase like “clean swatches,” his facial movements are the same as those for other phrases, such as “likes swats,” “then swine,” or “need no pots.”

Taylor and her research team will present their findings on April 23 at the 40th International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), that’s being held from April 19-24, 2015, in Brisbane, Australia.

How the new technique will affect international revenues remains unclear. While Furious 7 has performed well at the international box office so far, it still needs to earn at least another $1.17 to beat out James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster Avatar – the all-time international money-making film that has earned nearly $2.03 in international receipts.

Video demonstrates new dubbing method developed by Disney Research (Disney Research)

An artist’s impression shows how Mars may have looked about four billion years ago. (ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger/skysurvey.org)

Previous studies have indicated that liquid water once flowed on the Red Planet. Some even suggested that at one time, Mars held great quantities of H2O. But scientists now believe that most of the Planet’s current water supply exists solely in ice or vapor form.

In a recent analysis of data produced by NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity, researchers at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute found evidence that there may be salty but liquid water closer to the surface of Mars than previously thought.

Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers said they found the presence of the salt calcium perchlorate in the Martian soil. Salt can lower the freezing point of water so it doesn’t freeze into ice so easily, which is why it’s often used to melt ice on sidewalks and roadways.

Morten Bo Madsen, associate professor and head of the Mars Group at the Niels Bohr Institute, said that under the right conditions the calcium perchlorate can absorb water vapor from the atmosphere.

Measurements he and his colleagues made from Curiosity’s weather monitoring station have indicated that these ‘right conditions’ just happen to occur at night and right after sunrise during winter on Mars.

The researchers believe that Gale Crater was a large lake between 3.5 and 2.7 billion years ago. (NASA/JPL/Caltech/ESA/DLR/MSSS)

At night, some of Mars’ atmospheric moisture is concentrated into frost on the planet’s surface, much like it does here on Earth.

But when the calcium perchlorate within the Martian soil absorbs the moisture, Madsen said it forms a brine that lowers the freezing point and turns it into a liquid. That liquid water then seeps through and down the porous soil.

“Over time, other salts may also dissolve in the soil. And now that they are liquid, they can move and precipitate elsewhere under the surface,” explained Madsen in a Neil Bohr Institute press release.

Past observations made with Curiosity’s stereo camera showed areas of Mars that had the attributes of an ancient riverbed, indicating that plenty of running water once flowed on the Red Planet.

Some new close-up photos taken by the rover while traveling across Gale Crater on its way to Mount Sharp have revealed swaths of sedimentary deposits that were found lying as ‘plates’ piled atop one another and leaning toward the Martian mountain.

Very fine-grained sediments, which slowly fell down through the water, were deposited right at the bottom of the crater lake. The sediment plates at the bottom are level, which indicates the entire Gale Crater may have once held a large lake. (NASA/JPL, MSSS)

“These kind of deposits are formed when large amounts of water flow down the slopes of the crater and these streams of water meet the stagnant water in the form of a lake. When the stream meets the surface, the solid material carried by the stream falls down and is deposited in the lake just at the lake shore,” said Madsen.

While the sediment layers that the Curiosity observed were found leaning toward Mt. Sharp, the same type of deposits located on the bottom of the crater are level –  something that Madsen said indicates that at one time, the entire Gale Crater may have been a large lake.

While Madsen and his colleagues may have found signs of liquid water on Mars, a key ingredient for life, as we know it, to emerge and survive, they also assert that any potential life forms that might be able to endure the planet’s harsh conditions would probably be wiped out by the Red Planet’s powerful cosmic radiation. Based on that, Madsen and his team said it’s unlikely that life will be found on a planet so cold and dry.

(Photo: photos.com)

A multidisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Michigan has found that when death induced by cardiac arrest is near, the brain bursts into a flurry of activity that may actually play a role in hastening the patient’s death.

It is generally thought that the sudden eruption of signals between the brain and heart may be part of the brain’s efforts to help save the cardiac arrest patient. But in a new study, the research team uncovered surprising evidence that this brain activity, in fact, disrupts heart function.

“Despite the loss of consciousness and absence of signs of life, internally the brain exhibits sustained, organized activity and increased communication with the heart, which one may guess is an effort to save the heart,” said neurologist and senior author Jimo Borjigin, associate professor of molecular and integrative physiology in a University press release.

The research team included investigators with a wide-ranging backgrounds, from engineering, neuroscience, physiology, cardiology, chemistry, to pharmacology. The team examined the biological processes that can lead a healthy heart to stop beating after being deprived of oxygen for a few minutes.

The researchers simultaneously examined the hearts and brains of lab rats who were in cardiac arrest after experimental asphyxiation.

Along with asphyxiation, medical conditions such as cardiac arrhythmias, ischemic stroke, traumatic brain injury, brain hemorrhage and epilepsy can also induce cardiac arrest.

While monitoring the brain and heart activity of rats in cardiac arrest, the researchers noticed an immediate release of a number of neurochemicals from the brain as well as the initiation of heightened brain-heart communication.

An EMS technician performs CPR on a cardiac arrest patient. Behind patient is an automated external defibrillator (AED) which is also used to help stop ventricular fibrillation (David Bruce Jr./Creative Commons)

Using a new device called the electrocardiomatrix, which was developed in Borjigin’s laboratory, researchers noticed that signals from the brain synchronized with the heart rhythm following a steep drop in the heart rate of the lab animals.

But by blocking the flow of the brain’s neurochemicals and communication with the heart, the researchers said that they were able to greatly delay ventricular fibrillation, the most serious cardiac rhythm disturbance.

The lower chambers of the heart simply quiver and are unable to pump any blood during ventricular fibrillation.

“The study suggests that a pharmacological blockade of the brain’s electrical connections to the heart during cardiac arrest may improve the chances of survival in cardiac arrest patients,” said Borjigin.

According to the American Heart Association, brain death and permanent death can begin in just 4-6 minutes after cardiac arrest. A cardiac victim’s chances of survival drop by 7-10 percent with each passing minute without CPR and defibrillation assistance. Few attempts at resuscitation succeed after 10 minutes, according to the American Heart Association.

The study by Borjigin and her team will be published in this week’s PNAS Early Edition.