Lifeboat Foundation

MANILA, Philippines — A dengue case forecasting system using space data made by Philippine developers won the 2019 National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s International Space Apps Challenge. Over 29,000 participating globally in 71 countries, this solution made it as one of the six winners in the best use of data, the solution that best makes space data accessible, or leverages it to a unique application.

Dengue fever is a viral, infectious tropical disease spread primarily by Aedes aegypti female mosquitoes. With 271,480 cases resulting in 1,107 deaths reported from January 1 to August 31, 2019 by the World Health Organization, Dominic Vincent D. Ligot, Mark Toledo, Frances Claire Tayco, and Jansen Dumaliang Lopez from CirroLytix developed a forecasting model of dengue cases using climate and digital data, and pinpointing possible hotspots from satellite data.

Correlating information from Sentinel-2 Copernicus and Landsat 8 satellites, climate data from the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-PAGASA) and trends from Google search engines, potential dengue hotspots will be shown in a web interface.

Using satellite spectral bands like green, red, and near-infrared (NIR), indices like Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) are calculated in identifying areas with green vegetation while Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) identifies areas with water. Combining these indices reveal potential areas of stagnant water capable of being breeding grounds for mosquitoes, extracted as coordinates through a free and open-source cross-platform desktop geographic information system QGIS.

Check out the website here: http://aedesproject.org/

After ‘reanalyzing’ data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, scientists have discovered an Earth-size planet, named Kepler-1649c, residing in its star system’s habitable zone. Full Story: https://www.space.com/earth-size-exoplanet-habitable-zone-kepler.html

: Space.com / animation: NASA/Kepler Mission/Dana Berry / Kepler-1649c illustrations: NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter / produced & edited by Steve Spaleta (http://www.twitter.com/stevespaleta)

The star itself is about the same mass and a little larger than the Sun — a minority in our exoplanet hunts. It’s orbited by six planets: a super-Earth and five mini-Neptunes.

After monitoring it for seven years, astronomers have discovered that all six of those planets are orbiting HD 158259 in almost perfect orbital resonance. This discovery could help us to better understand the mechanisms of planetary system formation, and how they end up in the configurations we see.

Kilopower is a small, light-weight fission nuclear power system capable of providing up to 10 kilowatts of electrical power — enough to run several average households continuously for at least 10 years.

Four Kilopower units would provide enough power to establish an outpost on the Moon or Mars.

#engineering

Modern circuitry operates in binaries – switches can either be 0 or 1 – which in turn restricts their computing power to discrete values. Qubits, on the other hand, can hold both values depending on their state, and derives this property from quantum physics. Qubits are modelled on subatomic particles like electrons, giving them an edge over Boolean systems. Quantum computers are difficult to operate, in part due its bulk, power consumption, hardware complexity, and reliance on low temperatures.

Intel’s “hot” qubit technology ought to address the latter concern. These qubits are capable of operating at temperatures higher than 1 Kelvin (−458F / −273K), which is the warmest temperature that quantum computers till now were able to tolerate. Computers in outer space operate at 3 Kelvin. The practical benefits of this breakthrough will manifest itself if Intel can combine quantum hardware and control circuitry on the same chip. It has hitherto been difficult for researchers to separate control electronics for qubits from the qubits themselves owing to the frigid temperature that the latter require to function.

Intel will be hoping that this development will help it fabricate more efficient chips that meld the two parts on the same chip without compromising on fidelity. The commercialization of quantum computing still remains a pipe dream, but large corporations like Google and Intel are paving the way for improvements that could make quantum computers more viable. Even so, make sure you’re wearing a scarf before you go to collect your first quantum computer.

Astronomers have never seen a cosmic wind storm like this one.

:oooo.

At about 10:54 p.m. EDT, Parker Solar Probe surpassed 153,454 miles per hour — as calculated by the mission team — making it the fastest-ever human-made object relative to the Sun. This breaks the record set by the German-American Helios 2 mission in April 1976.

Parker Solar Probe will repeatedly break its own records, achieving a top speed of about 430,000 miles per hour in 2024.

Continue reading “Parker Solar Probe Becomes Fastest-Ever Spacecraft” »

In Spacefarers, Christopher Wanjek explores some pretty out-there ideas about space colonization (a future astronaut on Mars is illustrated above) with a down-to-Earth perspective.

Peepo/E+/Getty Images

Orbits a red dwarf. Probably gravitationally locked too (always showing same side to parent star). So highly unlikely to be any complex life.

‘Intriguing’ world found in data from retired Kepler space telescope.