A small NASA spacecraft has embarked on a two-year mission to give scientists their fist view of the happenings at the edge of the solar system.

The Ibex probe, short for “Interstellar Boundary Explorer,” will where the solar wind from the sun clashes with cold gases from interstellar space.

The solar wind, a stream of charged particles spewing from the sun at 1 million miles ( 1.6 million kilometers ) per hour, carves out a protective bubbles around the solar system. This bubble known as the heliosphere shields against most dangerous cosmic radiation that would otherwise interfere with human spaceflight.

Scientist recently discovered that the solar wind pressure is at its weakest level in 50 years, although the exact reason remains a mystery. Ibex could help confirm whether the heliosphere is shrinking.

Observation from Ibex should help researchers in “unlocking the secrets of this important interaction between galaxy,” said David McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. He is chief scientist for the $165 million mission.

Ibex, the size of a bus tire, was launch aboard a Pegasus rocket that was dropped from an aircraft over a Pacific atoll last Sunday.

The rocket lifted Ibex 130 miles (209 kilometers) above Earth and put it into orbit. The spacecraft then fired its solid rocket motor to loft itself even higher, eventually to 200,000 miles (321,853 kilometers) above Earth.

Ibex will build on the discoveries of the long-running twin Voyager spacecraft launch in 1977 to explore the outer planets. The deep-space, manmade probes have since sailed past the outer planets and are headed out of the solar system.

Unlike the Voyager craft, Ibex will not barrel through space, instead will do its job from high Earth orbit. The probe carries two sensors that will collect information about the solar wind’s mass and energy from all direction.

Stopping, starting and accelerating your car or SUV can burn unnecessary amounts of fuel while driving.

To combat this known challenge, two new technologies have recently come out to provide a greener driving experience, per LiveScience.

ECO pedal

Nissan introduced the ECO Pedal last month as ways to activate optimize driving behavior.

When the system detects that the driver is pressing too hard on the gas, the pedal pushes back on the foot to inform the driver that they are over-accelerating.

By reducing aggressive driving, the ECO Pedal can improve fuel efficiency by 5 to 10 percent, according to Nissan research. Commercialization of the product will begin in 2009.

Travolution

A second kind of “dummy light” technology aims to discourage those who speed all the way up to a red light.

For the past tow years, Audi has been testing their traffic control system, Travolution, in German City of Ingolstadt.

The pilot project incorporates 46 trafficlights that are optimized to increase traffic flow. Three of these lights also beam out a signal that tells when they will turn green.

Specially-equipped cars take this signal and compute a speed that the driver should maintain to avoid having to stop a the traffic light,

As of no, there are only two cars using Travolution, but Audi plans to extend the program by 20 additional cars and 50 more traffic lights.

Many reports of near-death experiences sound the same: a welcoming white light and a replay of memories.

But now scientist aim to study what really happens to the brain and consciousness when someone is on the verge of dying.

In a new study called Aware (Awareness during Resuscitation), doctors will examine patients in hospitals in Europe and North America who reach a state called cardiac arrest,

Live Science reported.

“Contrary to popular perception, Death is not a specific moment,’ said leader of the study Dr. Sam Parnia of the University of Southampton in the U.K.

“It is a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working and the brain ceases functioning a medical condition termed cardiac arrest, which from a biological viewpoint is synonymous with clinical death.”

Science has long struggled to define death, and to determine when the precise moment of death occurs.

Now though, most doctors consider death more of a process that an event. A person is though to have died when he stops breathing, his heart stops beating, and his brain activity ceases.

“During a cardiac arrest, all three criteria of death are present,” Parnia said. “There then follows a period of time, which may last from few seconds to an hour or more, in which emergency medical efforts may succeed in restarting the heart and reversing the dying process.

“What people experience during this period of cardiac arrest provides a unique window of understanding into what we are all likely to experience during the process.”

Previous research suggests about 10 to 20 percent if people who live through processes, reasoning, memories and sometimes detailed recall of events during their encounter with death.

One study found that people who reported peaceful feelings, bright light and out-of-body experiences during a brush with death are more likely to have had difficulty separating sleep from wakefulness in their everyday lives.

Both before and after their near-death experiences, these people often have symptoms of the rapid-eye movement (REM) state of sleep while awake.

The Aware researchers want to find out what happens to the brain when a person’s body has started to shut down, whether it is possible for people to see and hear during the cardiac arrest, what’s going on during out of body experiences.

The launch of the Aware study was announced at an international symposium at the United Nations Sept. 11

The current gruesome discovery that several dairy companies in China were using a toxic chemical additive (Melamine) in the formulation (or reconstitution by some middleman for retail sales of baby milk powder/formula and other milk products like chocolates, ice cream, etc., which had caused kidney stone formation in more than 54,000 children, a few resulting in death, only underscores the fundamental need for a competent, responsible, vigilant governmental sentinel in every country, like the US-Food and Drug Administration or the Philippine Bureau of Food and Drug, or your countries Drug Authority for public protection.

Composed of nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen, Melamine, when combined with formaldehyde and exposed to extreme heat and then cooled, results in a moldable plastic dish wares or containers that are hard, almost unbreakable and dishwasher-safe. Added to milk, which was diluted with water, to create more volume for greater financial profit, this substance induces kidney stone formation, over weeks and months, leads to renal failure, and in many cases, to death.

It is obvious that milk, as a food item, is not a regulated item and did not have to go through scientific screening and approval in China, otherwise this poison could have been detected prior to distribution, and serious ailments and deaths prevented.

But it is not only China where milk is exempt from such rigid scrutiny by a government agency. In the United States and in the Philippines, milk and other items, juices, pills, herbal, etc,. which the manufacturers claim as “food supplements” (in spite of the fact that most of them are advertised as “a cure” or “effective” for various illnesses), are exempt as “non-drugs” from the stringent regulatory mandate of the US-FDA or the Philippine BFAD which only covers drugs and medications, prior to production. In this regard, the government is glaringly impotent.

Folk remedies are our earthly natural gifts, and traditional plant and herbs are still man’s sources for about 85 percent of the world’s developing nations. Some of the problems with herbal drugs include lack of quality control, contamination with adulterants and bacteria.

There is no question that many plants, fungi, flowers, roots, leaves, fruits have chemical substances in them that are beneficial to the human body, not only as a source of nutrition but as herbal items with medicinal values. Modern science has harnessed some of them, reconfigured their molecular structures and properties, and transformed them into standard and safe medicines. Penicillin is one of the multitudes of drugs that have their origin from these natural elements.

The quest for alternative medicine, driven by culture, tradition, or economics, has been tainted today by the incursion of some pharmaceutical or manufacturing companies, which have flooded the market with hundreds of “herbal medications and juices,” each with the preposterous claim or insinuation that their products are useful or good for all diseases, from acne to athlete’s foot, from high blood pressure to diabetes, from impotence to ageing, from arthritis to cancer etc. They obviously aim to deceive the unsuspecting public into believing their product is a cure fro any and all disease known to man. And since this particular business is today a multi-billion dollar industry, it goes without saying that there are millions upon millions of ignorant consumers that are being victimized daily by these unscrupulous entrepreneurs.

While these companies are spending millions of dollars in marketing and promotion, they are raking in billions of dollars a year, by peddling their products, under the guise of the label “food supplement,’ in order to escape the strict scrutiny and investigation by the US Food and Drug Administration or similar governmental agencies in other countries, for safety, efficacy, proper dosage, contraindication, short and long-term side effective, etc.

Most herbal products today have not been scientifically investigated the same way all western drugs on the market have been studied and tested. So, we do not really know which is safe and efficacious, and what side-effects they have in long run. Not all herbal medicines are dangerous but quite a few been shown to cause kidney failure, liver failure, cancer, clot blockage in the kidney veins, seizures, etc. some of them have caused deaths.

Agencies like the US-FDA and Philippine BFAD, through the legislative, must, in my opinion as a consumer and, especially, as a physician, critique and re-evaluate their current authority, scope, and role, in general, to fully protect the health and welfare of the public. The China incident, where the responsible heads must roll, is a case in point, a compelling reason, why these agencies around the world must revisit the issue to better serve their citizens.

I realize that this issue of oversight is complex and expensive one. I also believe that the less government intrusion in the people’s life, the better for the people and the country. However, the great advances in modern medicine today would be useless if not harnessed to the fullest for the benefit of mankind. Scientific truth must prevail for the people‘s good, even if it hurts business. After all, health and life are priceless and irreplaceable commodities.

At this time, it would be prudent to avoid milk and milk products made in China, or from other countries in question, whoever the distributor might be, until the final official verdict is in. As always, it is wise to read the labels on canned or package food items, use only US-FDA and BFA or your countries Food Authority’s approved medications, and stay away from “food supplements.” Nothing beats breast milk for babies, and a healthy lifestyle of safe nutritious diet, daily exercise, light alcohol, intake abstinence from tobacco, and a regular medical and dental checkup for all of us.