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Sputnik, Spiders And Water In Space

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By KURT LOFT, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 31, 2007

TAMPA - Plenty of science percolated on this page over the last year, and today we look back at some of the more intriguing topics we had the pleasure of sharing with readers.

If water giveth life, then go forth and find it. A team of astronomers did, finding evidence of water vapor on a planet 63 light years from Earth. The orb belongs to a class of planets known as "hot Jupiters," large worlds orbiting very close to a host star. If water exists elsewhere in the cosmos, then some form of primordial ooze may not be far behind, said Sean Carey, an astronomer with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena: "It goes toward the possibility of finding life in the universe."

In a story about spiders, we got an interesting bite - er, bit - of information about the much-feared brown recluse. Many area residents who think they were bitten by the spider more likely had an unrelated infection, such as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, said Cynthia Lewis-Younger, medical director at the Florida Poison Information Center at Tampa General Hospital.

"Sometimes doctors don't know the difference, and I've seen patients diagnosed with a brown recluse bite that turns out to be something different," she said. "For the most part, these people don't see the spider, but they assume it's a spider bite."

This year marked the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite. The anniversary gave us a chance to reflect on the enormous impact Sputnik had on technology, science in the schools, and a superpower standoff.

"The significance of Sputnik is that the United States and Soviets were not going to go to war," said Howard McCurdy, professor of science policy at American University in Washington. "The way it turned out, the Cold War would be waged largely in symbolic terms. It was almost like knights jousting on the field of battle to preclude armies from actually having to meet."

The Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis in August cost the lives of more than a dozen people. It also raised questions about the integrity of thousands of aging bridges across the country. Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico is developing a simple, flexible sensor designed to detect bridge defects. A permanently mounted array of the devices would continuously monitor I-beams and other bridge parts for excessive vibration, movement and structural defects. Called the Comparative Vacuum Monitoring Device, the innovation looks like a transparent Band-Aid.

Engineers are working on a futuristic design for commercial and military aircraft, a hybrid flying wing similar to the B-2 bomber. Known as the X-48B, the prototype plane has distinct advantages over other aircraft in weight and efficiency. Its single, blended wing gives it enormous "lift" - the upward force that keeps a plane flying.

"So for the same size as a conventional plane, we save about 30 percent in fuel," said Dan Vicroy, an aerospace engineer with Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., where the vehicle is undergoing extensive testing. "It's basically a tailless aircraft."

Each year, as many as 500 million people contract mosquito-borne malaria, and nearly 2 million die, mostly children in poverty. Can it be stopped? Researchers at Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland are working on vaccines that target the malaria protein so they can predict how it adapts to the body's immune system. But the work is tricky because if the vaccine backfires, it could cause the immune system to go into overdrive.

Scientists are moving closer to perfecting an implantable lung designed to keep patients healthy as they wait for a donor organ. Rather than running on a battery-powered motor, the self-contained bio-lung feeds off a patient's own heart.

"A lot of research has been involved with studying the heart and then designing a lung device that uses the heart rather than a mechanical pump," said Robert Bartlett, a surgeon and pioneer in the development of artificial organs at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor. "That's what we've accomplished in the last five years."

She dreamed of touching the stars, and woke to the real thing in August when the shuttle Endeavour slipped into orbit. After two decades in the wings, Barbara Morgan finally got her wish, becoming the first American teacher to fly into space and sending a message about patience and perseverance to countless students around the country. The 55-year-old Morgan joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as backup to Christa McAuliffe, who died in the 1986 Challenger accident with six astronauts.

Imagine having at your fingertips all the world's known forms of life, complete with photographs, background and the latest scientific research. That's the point of the Encyclopedia of Life, a Web-based resource documenting the 1.8 million named species of living things. "It's very ambitious," said Mark W. Westneat, a zoologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. " We have close to 2 million things we know about, but there are probably 10 times that we haven't even described yet." Check it out at www.eol.org.

Parts of Greenland, the world's largest island, are disappearing faster than nature can replace them. Scientists say this massive relic of the last ice age is melting away by an estimated 100 billion tons a year. Greenland's giant ice sheet - which covers 85 percent of the island - is losing mass three times faster than it can be regained through snowfall, or about 20 percent of its mass annually, according Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

In April, we had the honor of meeting Stephen Hawking, the famed British cosmologist who has lived with crippling Lou Gehrig's disease most of his life. The author of "A Brief History of Time" came to Kennedy Space Center to fly aboard a specially modified Boeing 727 that creates brief, weightless plunges for its passengers. "It was amazing," Hawking said after the plane touched down. "I could have gone on and on. Space, here I come."

Reporter Kurt Loft can be reached at (813) 259-7570 or kloft@tampatrib.com.

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