Earth's Auroras and Thunderstorms: A Dramatic View from Space

We’ve shown you What a Hurricane Looks Like From Outer Space and NASA’s 7 Minute Tour of the Earth from Space (in HD). Now comes new high resolution footage from the International Space Station that gives you a dramatic view of coastlines and countries around the world.

Produced by Space Rip, this clip will give you an extraordinary view of England, France, Italy, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Greece, the island of Crete, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the United States, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Cuba.

Find this video housed in our collection of 125 Great Science Videos. If you love space travel, astronomy, physics, neuroscience or technology, then you will definitely want to spend time rummaging through the collection.

National security expert warns of Asian space race

James Clay Moltz, an associate professor in the department of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, has published a commentary paper in the journal Nature where he warns of a possible space race involving many Asian nations, possibly leading to an arms race. 

 
Moltz writes that despite denials by the major Asian players, there exists the beginnings of a space race among the most technologically advanced countries in the area.

In the lead of course is China, which besides the United States and Russia, is the only country to have put a person in space on its own.


Other Asian countries actively involved in space technology include India, South Korea and Japan, though others such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan are working on building a presence as well.

Japan of course, has been actively involved with the International Space station, and India has been putting nerves on edge by mixing its space technology with military goals by building rockets capable of carrying a payload all the way to Beijing.

The country has also launched its own rockets into space to deliver satellites, though it’s not yet achieved the broad range of successes of the Chinese program.

The problem with an Asian space race, Moltz contends, is that it builds an arena of unhealthy competition bred out of historic geopolitical rivalries.

It also wastes resources, but that’s not something that should concern other countries. What should he writes, is the possibility of an Asian space race morphing into an Asian arms race, something that could impact virtually every nation on Earth.

The current situation, he explains, is a collection of Asian countries who are unwilling to work together to meet mutual goals such as can be seen with the European Space Agency (ESA).

Instead, individual countries work independently, quite often duplicating work done by other countries both in Asia and in the west, resulting in secretive programs that have as a goal beating one another to the next level, rather than building programs that serve the national, or international good.

What is perhaps most chilling about an Asian space race is the way China, which is the clear leader, has gone about its space program, highlighted not by its triumphs in manned exploration, but in it’s destruction of one of its dead weather satellites by an anti-satellite weapon back in 2007.


Not only did that action contribute to the vast collection of space junk, but it sent shock waves through the entire international community as it demonstrated very clearly the types of technology China has been secretly working on. And because of its leadership role in the Asian community, the action has likely set other countries to develop their own such weapons.

One other worrisome offshoot of the space race is the impact it might have on those Asian countries unable to join in.

Pakistan, for example, a country with nuclear weapons, has voiced concerns over the missile technology that India has developed and has repeatedly made it clear that any actions by India it deems a threat to its own survival would be met with all out war, including the use of nuclear bombs.

More information: Technology: Asia's space race, Nature 480, 171–173 (08 December 2011) doi:10.1038/480171a

Beruli Ulcers: The WHO Needs to seriously re-think it's strategy

Buruli ulcers, one of the ‘neglected tropical diseases’ left aside by big pharma and governments alike, are reasonably well treatable, also in poor regions but then more attention has to be paid to early diagnosis and correct treatment.

This means the rules of the World Health Organization urgently need to be changed. So say scientists of the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM), based on ten years of research in Congo.

The disease is caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans, a nephew of the infamous tuberculosis bacterium. It occurs in tropical and subtropical countries, mainly in Africa. It causes hideously ulcerating ‘holes’ in the skin, that can dig to the bone and can outgrow to diameters of more than 10 centimetres.

Much about the disease is unknown, for instance how exactly people get infected. It is assumed that water plays a role, but only in 2008 scientists — at ITM — succeeded in cultivating the bacterium from a water insect.

For a long time the only treatment consisted of caring for the wounds, and possibly a skin transplantation. Nowadays the WHO proposes a treatment analogous to tuberculosis, with two antibiotics, rifampicin and streptomycin. This works for light cases, but for lesions above 10 cm the effect was not documented.

ITM scientist Anatole Kibadi Kapay collected cases in DR Congo from the previous five years, when surgery combined with antibiotics was used, and from the five year before that, when only surgery was used. In the process he discovered a new focus close to the Angolan border; he assumes it to be correlated to the working conditions in the illegal diamond mines there.

Kibadi Kapay noticed that the WHO guidelines for clinical diagnosis lead to a correct diagnosis in only 2 cases out of 3. As opposed to a Ziehl-Neelsen smear, a microscopic technique that is within reach of poor countries — and that, through a better diagnosis, prevents the needless use of antibiotics.

But when large wounds have to be treated, from a microscopically confirmed Buruli case, antibiotics indeed are of good use. With surgery only, 15% of patients relapse; with parallel use of antibiotics, less than 2% relapse. But antibiotics only, without surgery, make large wounds worse.

Kibadi Kapay — who today received a doctorate from Antwerp University for his work — and his ITM colleagues advocate faster surgery of large ulcerating lesions, without four weeks of waiting with antibiotics only.

The more because patients themselves already wait a long time before consulting a doctor — to them the ulcers are inflicted by witchcraft or fate.

The research by Kibadi Kapay demonstrates the need of a better education of the population, but more important, it shows that WHO guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of Buruli ulcers urgently need to be adapted.