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A reported by MSNBC, awards were announced on August 10, 2011 under the auspices of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, or NIAC. The space agency said the concepts were chosen on the basis of their potential for enhancing future space missions.

The grants will go toward further study, to determine whether the ideas could help NASA meet future mission requirements. "These innovative concepts have the potential to mature into the transformative capabilities NASA needs to improve our current space mission operations, seeding the technology breakthroughs needed for the challenging space missions in NASA's future," NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun said in today's announcement.

The 30 recipients were chosen from hundreds of proposals, One of the proposals was submitted by Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California.

Dr. Khoshnevis’ proposed project concerns the use of his robotic construction technology, Contour Crafting, for building structures on the moon. This is Dr. Khoshnevis’ second NASA grant on the subject. In the proposed project economically viable and reliable building systems and tool sets are being sought, examined and tested for extraterrestrial habitat and infrastructure buildup.

The project plans to utilize a unique architecture weaving the Contour Crafting automated building technology with designs for assisting rapid buildup of an initial operational capability lunar base. Using the CC technology, the project intends to draw up a detailed plan for a high fidelity simulation at NASA’s D-RATS facility, to construct certain crucial infrastructure elements in order to evaluate the merits, limitations and feasibility of adapting and using the CC technology for extraterrestrial application.

Elements suggested to be built and tested include roads, landing pads and aprons, shade walls, dust barriers, thermal and micrometeorite protection shields and dust-free platforms as well as other built up structures utilizing the well known in-situ-resource utilization (ISRU) strategy.

Several unique systems including the Lunar Electric Rover, the unpressurized Chariot rover, the versatile light-weight crane and Tri-Athlete cargo transporter as well as the habitat module mockups and a new generation of spacesuits are undergoing coordinated tests at NASA’s D-RATS.

This project intends to draw up a detailed synergetic plan to utilize these maturing systems coupled with the CC fabrication technology, tailored for swift and reliable lunar infrastructure development. This proposal intends to increase astronaut safety, improve buildup performance, ameliorate lunar dust interference and concerns, and attempts to reduce time-to-commission, all in an economic manner.

As part of this project, a figure-of-merit methodology will be created and employed togain some quantitative insight into the efficiency of using the CC technology to augment these other systems already in place.

Automated building technology in which CC plays an integral role, will revolutionize the way structures are built on Earth, in dense urban environments, in difficult-to-build and difficult-to-service sites, or in remote and hostileregions of the globe.

The CC technology has potential to improve materials handling and schedules, will reduce the need for hard physical labor, assigning humans to a strictly supervisory role, eliminate issues relating to human safety and produce intricate, aesthetically refined designs and structures.

Space architecture in general and lunar structures in particular will also provide a rich new aesthetic vocabulary for architects to employ in the design and creation of buildings that employ high technology and building information modeling that is vital for optimizing use of materials and energy that is critical to building economics.

 

 

 

An Inland Empire congressman and an area doctor disagree with a recent finding from a panel of physicians who recently recommended against healthy men getting screened for prostate cancer.Rep. Joe Baca, D-San Bernardino, held a forum at a retirement home in Rialto with Fontana-based urologist Manouchehr Lalehzarian on the need for middle-aged men to get screened for prostate cancer through the prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, blood test.

High levels of PSA could point to prostate cancer, Lalehzarian said.

"I hope this event better informs my constituents about prostate cancer and motivates men who have not had a screening to ask their provider for a PSA test," Baca said.

But the physicians panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, examined data and reported little if any reduction in deaths as a result of routine PSA screening.

It concluded that too many men are diagnosed with nonfatal tumors and the treatment causes serious side effects.

The task force said it analyzed all theprevious research on the subject, including five major studies, to evaluatewhether routine screening reduces deaths from prostate cancer. The conclusion: There's little if any benefit.

Lalehzarian said it's crucial for prostate cancer to be found in the early stages.

"Our goal is to find this cancer in the early stages to cure the man," Lalehzarian said. "If the man does not come to us, our hands are tied. They have to be knowledgeable enough to come to our office to be checked."

More than 217,730 new patients were diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 32,000 men died from the disease last year, according to the National Cancer Institute. One out of every six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, Lalehzarian said.

Baca said he has started a Prostate Cancer Awareness Task Force under the Men's Health Caucus in Congress.

Baca said his task force is discussing a bipartisan letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the U.S. Preventative Task Force urging them "to change this potentially dangerous recommendation."

The vast majority of men over 50 have had at least one PSA blood test. The assumption has been that finding cancer early is always a good thing.

Not so, said Dr. Virginia Moyer of the Baylor College of Medicine, who heads the Preventative Task Force.

"We have put a huge amount of time, effort and energy into PSA screening and that time, effort and energy, that passion, should be going into finding a better test instead of using a test that doesn't work," Moyer told The Associated Press.

Lalehzarian said the test is the only one available.

"We don't have anything else," he said. "We don't have any option."

Source: Sun newspaper

Researchers at the University of Hertfordshire are developing a robotic system which will be a suitable companion for older people.

Dr Farshid Amirabdollahian, a senior lecturer in Adaptive Systems and expert in Rehabilitation Robotics and Assistive Technologies at the University is coordinating a new FP7 European project called ACCOMPANY Acceptable Robotics Companions for Ageing Years which will develop a robot to assist with everyday tasks in the home. The principal investigator for this project is Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn who has a substantial track record in human-robot interaction studies and companion robots.

Over the three-year period of the project, the researchers will carry out research in the University's Robot House. They will use a Care-o-bot® 3 to carry out a wide range of studies with older people to assess their requirements and acceptance of the robot as part of an intelligent home environment. Results will then be fed back to adapt the technology so that it better suits user demands and preferences.

"The envisaged relationship between the user and the robot is that of co-learner, whereby the robot and user provide mutual assistance and so that the user is not dominated by technology, but feels empowered by it," said Dr Amirabdollahian. "Our aim is to use the robot to increase independence and quality of life."

The research of the UH team in ACCOMPANY will be based on results from the FP7 project LIREC which has studied since 2008 the development of robots as home assistance for a general user group. In contrast, ACCOMPANY will focus on the specific user group of elderly people.

Other project partners are: Hogeschool Zuyd, Fraunhofer, University of Amsterdam, University of Sienna, MADoPA - a French expert centre and University of Birmingham.

ACCOMPANY is a €4,825,492 FP7 European project. It began last month and is due to end by September 30 2014.

The project is partially funded by the European Commission under the Seventh (FP7 - 2007-2013) Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development.

Source: medical news today