The James Webb Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope will let NASA peer into deep space to the beginnings of our universe. It will be specially equipped to view infrared light, which escapes from the dust clouds where the first stars and planets formed.

Story: Revolutionary design, runaway cost

Comparing mirrors

Webb’s primary mirror’s resolution is acute enough to see details of a penny at 24 miles.

Packed away for launch

The telescope is folded up at launch and automatically deploys to its full size once in space.

Remaining in place

The Webb telescope must remain cold – around -370 degrees – to best observe infrared light. Its orbit will keep it in place relative to the sun and earth.

Seeing green

Costs for the Webb telescope have mounted to an estimated $8.8 billion. How annual funding has grown (scale in millions):

Note: The $8.8-billion overall cost includes development, launch and five years of operations and science. Data from 2013 to 2017 estimated.

Sources: NASA, Northrop Grumman. Note: Graphic is schematic, not to scale.

Credits: Graphic by Raoul Ranoa, Graphics reporting by Tom Reinken Programming by Anthony Pesce.

Published: Feb. 20, 2012

NASA's Webb telescope: Revolutionary design, runaway costs

The $8.8-billion Webb Space Telescope promises to provide a glimpse at the first light in the universe. But its spiraling cost may push NASA into a new era of austerity.

Specialists work on the sun shield for the James Webb Space Telescope at Northop Grumman Corp. in Redondo Beach. (Allen J. Schaben, Los Angeles Times / December 20, 2011) In deep, cold space, nearly a million miles from Earth, a giant telescope later this decade will scan for the first light to streak across the universe more than 13 billion years ago. The seven-ton spacecraft, one of the most ambitious and costly science projects in U.S. history, is under construction for NASA at Northrop Grumman Corp.'s space park complex in Redondo Beach. The aim is to capture the oldest light, taking cosmologists to the time after the big bang when matter had cooled just enough to start forming the first blazing stars in what had been empty darkness. Astronomers have long dreamed about peering into that provenance. "It is the actual formation of the universe," said Alan Dressler, the astronomer at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena who chaired a committee that proposed the telescope more than a decade ago. If the James Webb Space Telescope works as planned, it will be vastly more capable than any of the dozen currently deployed U.S. space telescopes and will be a dramatic symbol of U.S. technological might. But for all its sophistication, the project also reveals a deeply ingrained dysfunction in the agency's business practices, critics say. The Webb's cost has soared to $8.8 billion, more than four times the original aerospace industry estimates, which nearly led Congress to kill the program last year. The agency has repeatedly proposed such technologically difficult projects at bargain-basement prices, a practice blamed either on errors in its culture or a political strategy. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee that controls NASA's budget, said a combination of both problems affected the Webb. "There was not adequate oversight," Wolf said. "And there were reports that the cost estimates were being cooked a little bit, some by the company, some by NASA." It could spell a new era for the space agency, in which it will have money for just one flagship science mission per decade rather than one every few years as it has in the past. The Webb's cost growth, along with an austere budget outlook for NASA, is depleting the agency's pipeline of big science missions. A much-discussed mission to return samples of Martian soil to Earth, for example, may be unaffordable, according to the House Science Committee staff. The Webb telescope was conceived by the astronomy community in the late 1990s as a more modest project with a smaller mirror for about $500 million. Then-NASA chief Daniel Goldin challenged the science community in a major speech to double the capability of the telescope for the same price. Dressler, who was in the audience when Goldin gave the speech, recalled: "It astonished everybody. It made no sense that you could build a telescope six times larger than Hubble … and have it come in cheaper. We were so stunned, we didn't know what to do." The early lowball cost figures had no official standing, but they shaped political expectations many years later. Not surprisingly, the price began to rise, first to $1 billion and then to more than $2 billion when the aerospace industry began submitting estimates. By 2008, when the program was well underway, the cost hit $5 billion. NASA was running into technical difficulties in manufacturing almost every aspect of the telescope, and it was forced to stretch out the schedule, said Richard Howard, NASA's head of the Webb program and the agency's deputy chief technologist. The agency kept investing in the most difficult technologies for the Webb, leaving other parts of the project out of sync. As a result, some components will be boxed up and stored for years while other pieces are completed. The delays boosted the cost even more. By last year, the cost estimate to build the telescope hit $8 billion, not including about $940 million in contributions by international partners and about $800 million NASA will spend for five years of operation. The launch date slipped from 2014 to 2018, meaning an army of experts will have to keep working years more on the project. In the past, NASA could tap reserves in its larger budget to get through technical problems, but those funding pools have dried up, Howard said. The skyrocketing cost infuriated many in Congress. Last year, Wolf led an effort by House Republicans to eliminate all of the Webb's funding, though it was ultimately restored by a conference committee. But to those working on the program, the message was sent. "It didn't feel good," said Scott Willoughby, Northrop's general manager for the project. "It is costing more than it should. But we didn't make any bad choices. The money was well-spent. We are building the telescope we originally conceived." Indeed, an independent review panel commended the telescope team last year for its technical merit. The machine has required a whole list of revolutionary developments. The 21-foot-diameter mirror will be six times larger in area than Hubble, focused by more than 100 motors on its back. Made up of 18 hexagonal segments covered in a thin layer of gold, it is so big that it must be folded up for launch — another innovation. To withstand the brutal temperature shifts in space and to save weight, the mirror is made of the rare element beryllium. Only a few companies in the world can polish beryllium so finely that mere atoms can be brushed off. One of those companies is L-3 Communications SSG-Tinsley Inc. in Richmond, northeast of San Francisco. The grinding and polishing process took seven years and required the company to build eight custom machines that cost $1 million apiece. "We had to find a way to do this right," said John Kincade, a vice president with L-3. "The mirrors have to be perfect." As ancient light traverses the universe, it shifts to the infrared region of the spectrum, requiring the Webb to have mirrors capable of collecting very faint emissions and detecting them with special sensors that must be kept at nearly the lowest possible temperature known to exist. The satellite will rely on four instruments, supplied by a European consortium, Canada, the University of Arizona and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, with other partners. To achieve those low temperatures, the Webb will have a sophisticated refrigeration system and a five-layer plastic shade to shield the mirror and instruments from the sun. The shade will stretch to the size of a tennis court, keeping temperatures on one side at minus-388 degrees Fahrenheit and the other hot enough to fry an egg at 185 degrees. If it all works, not only will the Webb see the first light of the universe, but it will spot new planets and even determine whether those distant bodies hold water, Howard said. Howard is confident now that the cost will not increase further and that NASA can execute the program on the new schedule. If the cost does go higher, Wolf admits Congress is not likely to kill the program but says NASA will get hurt in many other ways. "The real danger is not that [the Webb] will not be funded, but it will consume so many other NASA programs," he warned.

AMD HD7770 Review

Introduction

If you're a big fan of getting a lot of performance for a reasonable outlay, then the numbers 770 will get you all excited. After all the 4770 and 5770s were both cards with great levels of performance and yet came in at a very reasonable price-point.

Given that the top end cards in the 7 series are both more expensive than we're used to from AMD, and the rejig of their naming conventions with the 6 series, will the HD7770 live up to the lofty expectations of its predecessor?

Technical Specifications

One of the main points of the HD7770 is that it has all the AMD technologies built in to it. Rather than cutting down the featureset as well as the amount of Stream Processors and clockspeed, AMD have solely reduced the performance of the card, but left all the Eyefinity and rendering elements alone.

     

Deconstructing Dengue: How Old Is That Mosquito?

Scientists can spend years working on problems that at first may seem esoteric and rather pointless. For example, there's a scientist in Arizona who's trying to find a way to measure the age of wild mosquitoes.

As weird as that sounds, the work is important for what it will tell scientists about the natural history of mosquitoes. It also could have major implications for human health.

Here's why. There's a nasty disease called dengue that is just beginning to show up in the United States. It's caused by a virus, and it's transmitted from person to person by a mosquito. A mild case of dengue is no worse than flu. A serious case can mean death.

Michael Riehle at the University of Arizona is trying to solve a curious puzzle about dengue: why there have been dozens of cases in nearby Texas and none, or virtually none, in Arizona. Riehle thinks the answer has to do with Arizona's geography.

"It's right on the edge of the range where these dengue mosquitoes are found," he says. "It's a fairly harsh environment, and we think that they might not be surviving long enough to efficiently transfer the disease to other people."

So to test his hypothesis, Riehle wants to be able to compare the life spans of mosquitoes in Arizona with those in Texas.

It's not easy to tell how old a mosquito is: It's not as if they carry around birth certificates or government-issued IDs. Right now the tools for measuring the age of mosquitoes are pretty crude. For example, you can look at a female mosquito's ovaries to see if they have produced any eggs. Riehle says if they have, that means the mosquito is at least five days old, since they can't produce eggs before that. "But that's all it can tell us — less than five days, or more than five days," Riehle says.

So Riehle has a new idea. He wants to see if he can use a mosquito's gene to tell its age.

Looking For Clues In Genes

There are ways to tell when a particular gene is switched on or off in a mosquito. Riehle is looking for genes that switch on or off when the mosquito reaches a particular age. He's found one so far. He needs more in order to make more age estimates.

The Continent Where Climate Went Haywire

From floods to cyclones to fires of unimaginable ferocity, climate 
change has unleashed a host of plagues on Australia. But catastrophe has 
spawned a national rebirth.

“The river came up to right where we’re sitting, and the waters were more than two feet deep,” Peter Goodwin tells me in the driveway of his ranch-style house perched on the banks of the Balonne River in St. George, a village of 3,500 in eastern Australia. It is a drizzly Sunday afternoon in April, three months after a devastating flood that drenched a landmass the size of France and Germany combined and isolated the town after the rain-swollen river rose to a record 45 feet.

Agricultural areas like St. George were hardest hit by the relentless rains and overflowing rivers that swamped roads, cut off power lines, washed away vineyards and fruit orchards, drowned thousands of head of cattle and other livestock, and covered homes and everything inside them in thick layers of sediment and mud. Shell-shocked residents are still digging out from under the debris.

“That’s the hard part of the flood—the aftermath,” says Goodwin, 60, a crusty, compactly built man with piercing blue eyes and calloused hands who works as an operations manager for the local municipality and has been staying with his grown daughter while he makes his home habitable again. “You get a lot of help during the flood, but then everyone settles back into their routine. There are a lot of houses down there that are still empty,” he adds, gesturing toward the riverbank. “And they will be for a long time to come”...

New 'Cell Assay On a Chip:' Solid Results from Simple Means

The great artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci once said that "simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) research engineer Javier Atencia certainly believes in the wisdom of what da Vinci preached; he has a reputation for creating novel microfluidic devices out of ordinary, inexpensive components. This time, he has combined a glass slide, plastic sheets and double-sided tape into a "diffusion-based gradient generator" -- a tool to rapidly assess how changing concentrations of specific chemicals affect living cells.

Atencia's latest innovation offers a simple and inexpensive way to expose an array of cultured cells to a chemical gradient -- a solution where the chemical concentration changes gradually and predictably across the array. Such gradients are a rapid, high-throughput way to evaluate the effect on cell growth or toxicity.

There are two distinct advantages to the new NIST system over traditional microfluidic cell assay devices. The first is that the gradient is created by diffusion -- the gentle movement of matter from one point to another by random molecular motion. Conventional microfluidic systems usually mix fluids by pumping them in a circular motion or by twisting and folding them together. Diffusion greatly reduces the risk of cells being swept away or damaged by shearing forces in the test fluid.

The second big advantage is simplicity. The gradient generator is built in layers, with each section precisely positioned with an alignment tab. The base is a glass slide, upon which is attached a strip of double-sided tape cut to have a row of four micrometer-sized channels. Atop this goes a polystyrene strip cut to have two lines each of four tiny circular "wells" where each pair lines up with the ends of the channel below it. The next layer is another strip of double-sided tape, this time with a Y-shaped canal cut into it to serve as the flow path for the chemical gradient. Finally, a Mylar strip cut to have an identical Y-canal serves as the cover.

The hinged cover allows access to the wells for adding test cells. Once done, the cover is lowered and affixed, sealing the gradient generator. Fluid flow in and out of the system is accomplished using another Atencia innovation, magnetic connectors. Kept at constant pressure, this flow assures a steady-state stream through the device and creates a diffusion gradient in each buried channel. Cells in the channels are simultaneously exposed to a range of chemical concentrations from high to low.

To test the device, Atencia and his colleagues loaded it with cells genetically engineered to produce large amounts of green fluorescent protein (GFP) and then introduced cycloheximide (CHX), a chemical that shuts down ribosomes, the cell's protein factories. Cells exposed to the toxin quickly stop synthesizing GFP, decreasing fluorescence by an amount directly related to the concentration of CHX.

This is exactly what the researchers observed in the gradient generator assays. The cells were exposed three times to CHX, and each time, the level of GFP fluorescence increased as the concentration of CHX in the gradient decreased, and vice versa.

In his previous microfluidics creations, Atencia turned a simple plastic dish into a "microfluidic palette" for exposing cells to multiple chemical concentrations in a single chamber and then merged donut-shaped magnets and plastic tubes to make a leak-free connector for getting fluids into and out of a microchannel.

You might be a terrorist if you have two cell phones, use Web proxies

Are you concerned about your digital privacy enough to use proxies and encryption software? Do you voice chat with fellow PC gamers? If so, you might be a terrorist, according to FBI and DoJ. Public Intelligence has discovered a federal document outlining a "Communities Against Terrorism" initative that describes various "suspicious" activities and offers tips on reporting them to the government.

The guideline (PDF) lists many perfectly normal behaviors but tries to validate their inclusion by emphasizing extremes that are completely open to interpretation. For instance, someone involved in terrorist activities might be "overly" concerned about their privacy and attempt to shield their screen from view of others. Such an individual might also travel "illogical" distances to visit an Internet Café.

You might also be a terrorist if you use multiple cell phones, switch SIM cards in the same handset, mask your IP address, download information on "timers, electronics or remote transmitters/receivers", or partake in "suspicious" communications through VoIP services. The list goes as far as to mention logging on to a residential-based Internet provider, such as checking your Comcast or AOL email.

Naturally, it's virtually impossible to define what constitutes being "overly" private, traveling "illogical" distances or making "suspicious" VoIP calls. By making such broad strokes, it could be argued that anyone engaging in such activities is suspect, regardless of how innocuous they may be. Nonetheless, if you feel compelled to report your neighbor or coworker, the FBI and DoJ suggest that you:

• Gather information about the suspects without drawing attention to yourself
• Log license plates, vehicle descriptions, names, languages spoken and ethnicities
• Don't collect metadata, content or search the individuals' electronic communications