text: See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11087204 Role of visual input in nonlinear postural control system Article in Experimental Brain Research · December 2002 DOI: 10.1007/s00221-002-1170-1 · Source: PubMed CITATIONS READS 39 196 6 authors, including: Pierre-Marie Gagey Jacques Martinerie Posturology Pierre and Marie Curie University - Paris 6 70 PUBLICATIONS 589 CITATIONS 171 PUBLICATIONS 15,615 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Michel Le Van Quyen French Institute of Health and Medical Research 147 PUBLICATIONS 6,270 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: A psychology of the scientific discovery View project Sensory stimulation during NREM View project All content following this page was uploaded by Michel Le Van Quyen on 20 May 2014. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. SEE PROFILE Exp Brain Res (2002) 147:1–7 DOI 10.1007/s00221-002-1170-1 RESEARCH ARTICLE Osamu Sasaki · Shin-ichi Usami · Pierre-Marie Gagey · Jacques Martinerie · Michel Le Van Quyen · Patrick Arranz Role of visual input in nonlinear postural control system Received: 17 December 2001 / Accepted: 9 May 2002 / Published online: 13 September 2002 Springer-Verlag 2002 Abstract. Stabilometry signals involve irregular and unpredictable components. The purpose of the present study was to investigate these signals with a nonlinear technique to examine how the complexity of the postural control system breaks down under altered visual conditions. We evaluated the dynamical similarities of the postural control system when the eyes were open or closed, or when there was optokinetic stimulation (OKS). A similarity index was calculated by the cross-correlation integral between the two dynamics: eyes open and eyes closed, or eyes open with OKS. Using this technique, dynamical changes were not observed between eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions. This result suggests that the nonvision condition does not produce any striking effect on the postural control system; instead, the eyes-open condition causes a decrease in the stochastic activity of the postural control system, which may originate mainly from the stiffness of the musculoskeletal systems. In contrast, the visual input of OKS affected the dynamics of the postural control system in nearly half of the subjects (group 2) despite showing no significant differences between the eyes-open condition and the other conditions for area as the conventional parameter. However, the other half of the subjects (group 1) did not experience any influence of OKS on their postural dynamics, despite showing significant differences between eyes-open and the other conditions for all traditional parameters. From O. Sasaki ()) · S. Usami Department of Otolaryngology, Shinshu University School of Medicine, 3-1-1 Asahi, Matsumoto 390-8621, Japan e-mail: [email protected] Tel.: +81-263-372666 Fax: +81-263-369164 P.-M. Gagey Institut de Posturologie, Paris, France J. Martinerie · M. Le Van Quyen LENA (Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Imagerie Crbrale), CNRS UPR640, Hpital de la SalpÞtrire, Paris, France P. Arranz Midi Capteurs, Toulouse, France the results for group 2, we hypothesize that OKS may induce the striking effect on dynamics properties of the multilink network system involving visual and vestibular cortex related to self-motion perception, which acts to decrease the stochastic activity in order to correct disturbed posture. Keywords Chaos · Complexity · Balance · Optokinetic · Vection · Human Introduction The control of human balance during upright standing depends upon the integration of afferent information from the vestibular, somatosensory and visual systems. The importance of vision in the maintenance of postural control has been well documented, for example, in static conditions the visual afferences reduce the self-generated body sway by 50% (Edward 1946). Traditionally, the postural control mechanism of orthostatic posture has been analyzed by measurement of the center of pressure (COP) with a stabilometer. Body stabilization has been estimated by measuring the magnitude of displacement, the area, and the power spectrum (Kapteyn et al. 1989). The most popular protocol for the visual system is the Romberg test, which makes the comparison of postural sway under eyes-open (EO) and -closed (EC) conditions by using the these parameters. However, the human postural control system is highly complex, consisting of multiple sensory systems, motor components, and central integration. These postural stabilization systems interact with each other through feedback loops, constituting a multilink network around the neck, hip, and ankle joints (Allum et al. 1992), so small changes in one input can have striking and unanticipated effects. Hence, the stabilometry signals can be assumed to arise from a nonlinear control system (Sasaki et al. 2001). Given the complexity of the postural control system, it is conceivable that the changes of the visual information 2 involve a transition of postural control dynamics through requiring adjustments to the weights given to each sensory system. From the viewpoint of the control system, the physiological insights obtained from the conventional measurements in stabilometry, including displacement, area, or power spectrum, are limited in providing meaningful findings of how the complex integration changes. Nonlinear analysis offers an alternative way to characterize qualitative changes in the dynamics of the complex system and promises to be important in clinical practice. A promising field for the application of nonlinear analyses is electroencephalography. In particular, the application of this analysis to epileptic seizure makes it possible to detect dynamical changes of brain activity several minutes prior to seizure, which cannot be detected by linear methods (Martinerie et al. 1998; Le Van Quyen et al. 1999). Furthermore, a similar approach has led to promising results in the analysis of heart rate variability, i.e., nonlinear analysis can be used to predict the risk of sudden death in cardiac patients, contrary to time domain analysis (Woo et al. 1992). On the other hand, the first application of nonlinear analysis to posturolography by Collins and De Luca (1994) suggested that the postural control system should not be modeled as a chaotic process and is better represented as a stochastic one. These findings thus offer significant advantages over more traditional linear procedure. The fundamental idea in nonlinear analysis is that the dynamics of a system are studied in a phase space, and a point in this space characterizes the state of the system at any moment in time. In order to reconstruct the trajectory from a single time series, the time-delayed method is usually employed (Takens 1981). In our earlier study using the nonlinear technique for stabilometry signals, we examined whether the visual input and the vestibular lesion cause the qualitative changes in the dynamics of the control network (Sasaki et al. 2001). These analyses revealed the significant reduction of a similarity index (Sim), which reflects the dynamical closeness between two states, quantifying the extent to which the dynamics differed between the EO and EC conditions in the patients with vestibular lesions. Moreover, nonlinear measurement can detect finer vestibular compensation processes than conventional measurements. The purpose of the present study was to further investigate the stabilometry signals with nonlinear techniques in order to examine how the complexity of the postural control system breaks down under altered visual conditions. Furthermore, it is well known that optokinetic stimulation (OKS) induces an increase in postural sway (Lee and Lishman 1975; Dichgans et al. 1976; Lestienne et al. 1977) and an illusion of self-motion, called "circular vection" (CV). These visual stimuli create a sensory conflict, requiring the postural control system to increase dependence on proprioceptive and vestibular cues. Although it is not clear which cortical areas are involved in the visual perception of self-motion, a recent PET activation study (Brandt et al. 1998) has pioneered new functional interpretations of CV. However, it is not known how the neural network of postural control changes during OKS in order to maintain balance. Therefore, the second aim of this investigation was to obtain quantitative data regarding the change of postural control dynamics during OKS. Materials and methods Experimental methods Twenty-three healthy subjects (3 women and 20 men, aged 24– 45 years), who had no history of dysequilibrium, participated in this study. All subjects were volunteers who gave their informed consent prior to participation. Stabilometry was performed by means of a force platform (AFP40/16; Midi Capteurs, France) with a construction based on the strain gauge principle. This platform can measure a difference in force of €0.2 N, which corresponds to a movement of the COP of €0.1 mm. The COP signals were sampled for 51.2 s at a frequency of 40 Hz by a microcomputer. The subjects stood barefoot with their arms relaxed comfortably at their sides under standardized conditions determined by the Association Franaise de Posturologie (Gagey et al. 1988). The visual target was placed 90 cm away, illuminated with 2,000 lux. Horizontal OKS consisted of random dots projected on a screen (Jung type) which rotated at a constant speed of 60/s to the right for 60 s. The subjects were instructed to stare straight ahead at the stimuli without attempting to follow their course. All subjects experienced the illusion of self-motion in this condition. In order to examine the contribution of visual input to the postural stabilization system, the subjects performed 3 sets of two 51.2-s, consecutive balance tasks: (a) with the eyes open in both tasks, (b) with the eyes open and closed, and (c) with the eyes open and with OKS. The first EO task constructed a reference dynamic, which was compared with the reconstructed dynamics in the successive task. The order of the 3 sets of trials was randomized and a 10-min rest was given after each set trial. To maintain their alertness, subjects were required to do mental arithmetic during the tests. Conventional measure The conventional measure was performed in terms of the total length, the total distance of the lateral component (X length), the total distance of the anteroposterior component (Y length), and the area of the 90% confidence ellipse (surface; Takagi et al. 1985), which contains 90% of the COP positions sampled. Nonlinear measure We employed a new nonlinear analysis method, which was applied to the anticipation of epileptic seizures by Le Van Quyen et al. (1999). A measure of similarity was here used to quantify the extent to which the dynamics differ between distant pairs of time windows. The utility of relative measures between different parts of long, nonstationary signals has been discussed in a number of recent theoretical works (Manuca and Savit 1996; Schreiber and Schmitz 1997). Relative measures show a greater discriminatory power than other current nonlinear techniques and a validity that is not dependent on the dynamical nature of the system. The algorithm for quantifying the extent to which the underlying dynamics differ between pairs of segments follows. We define here a time series during 51.2 s of stabilometry signals, with the reference segment of the EO task and the successive task given as Sop and Sss, respectively. The standard way 3 Fig. 1a, b An example of the quantification of the dynamic similarity between eyes open (EO) and closed (EC) in x-axis (x(t)) recording. A is the sequences of time intervals, which are derived from successive maximums of signal. From the each time interval between two successive maximums, the delayed vectors are formed. B defines a multidimensional reconstruction of the dynamics by a time-delay embedding of the intervals (In, In+1, In+2,...In+m–1), where m=8 in our study, but here m=3 for a schematic representation. Here, the open circles and the crosses show the dynamic clouds with eyes open and closed, respectively. Next, the comparison of the dynamics between eyes open and closed in phase space is made by calculation of the similarity index (COP center of pressure) of reconstructing the underlying dynamics is given by a time-delay embedding of the amplitudes. However, this reconstruction is computationally troublesome for practical applications and requires a large data set. Hence, we adapted another way to reconstruct the qualitative dynamics. The time series was prefiltered between 0.02 and 2.5 Hz then reduced to pure phase information by generating the sequence of time intervals between successive maximums of the signal (Fig. 1A). From a theoretical standpoint, the reason for this is that time intervals can be interpreted as the phase of the system's flow in a Poincar section (Pikovski et al. 1997). This method makes it possible to obtain a pure dynamical component while avoiding loss of important dynamical information as a result of the reduction of noise components induced by variations in signal amplitudes such as spiking activity. If Tn shows the times of maximums, then In=Tn+1–Tn is the time interval between two successive maximums. First, we constructed the delay vectors forming An=(In, In+1,..., In+m–1), which is defined as an m-dimensional embedding space. We chose m=8 because, at more than 8, the calculated Sim showed the same value as m=8 and, at below eight, it showed decrease. Hence, the optimal value of the embedding dimension in this study could be taken to be m=8. Next, in order to further reduce the noise, a single value decomposition (SVD; Albano et al. 1988) of this 8-dimensional embedding space was employed. Let A(Sop) be the trajectory matrix of a reference time series with eyes open Sop (i.e., the matrix whose rows are the embedding vectors Sn), then a SVD can be calculated with conventional algorithms by the transformation A(Sop)fi X(Sop)=A(Sop)V, where X(Sop ) is the trajectory matrix projected onto the basis V defined by the eigenvectors of the covariance matrix A(Sop)T·A(Sop). The dynamics in the space defined by the largest singular values are identical to those in the original embedding space. In order to allow comparisons between two dynamics, a basic skeleton of a dynamics built by a random selection of a sub-set of points is considered. This produces an adapted picture Y(Sop) of the reconstruction, which extracts the most frequent occupations of the phase-space flow. The dynamic similarities are estimated between the dynamics with eyes open Y(Sop) and the projection X(Sss) of an 8-dimensional reconstruction of Sss on the principal axes of the dynamics, with eyes open as the reference dynamics (i.e., X(Sss)=A(Sss)·V, where V is the eigenvector matrix of the reference window; Fig. 1B). Thereby, the statistical measurement of the similarity based on the cross-correlation integral is calculated as follows: X X 1 C Sop ; Sss ¼ T jjYi Sop Xj ðSss Þjj r Nop Nss i¼1;Nop j¼1;Nss where Q is the Heaviside step function, || || represents the euclidian norm, and Nop (and Nss) means the number of elements in each set. This equation yields the probability of finding points within a neighborhood "r" in the reconstruction of Sop close to points in that of Sss, where r is the distance at 30% of cumulative neighborhood distribution of the Sop set. In order to further improve the discriminatory power between two dynamics, we modified this measure with the cross-correlation ratio Sim: qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi Sim Sop: Sss ¼ C Sop; Sss = C Sop: Sop C Sss; Sss The Sim value ranges from 0 to 1 and yields the degree of similarity between two dynamics. When the similarity of the two dynamics becomes close, the value is approximately 1. Inversely, changes of dynamical state produce a reduction in the value to less than 1. By means of this procedure, we compared the dynamical similarity between the stabilometry signals with two successive tasks of each set trial: (a) EO-EO, (b) EO-EC, and (c) EO-OKS, in the lateral direction (x-axis), called similarity X, and in the anteroposterior direction (y-axis), called similarity Y. This computation can be performed with the aid of MATLAB (Math Works) on a PC. 4 Fig. 2 The distribution of the similarity indexes for all subjects (N=23) under each compared set trial Statistical analyses Comparisons of the similarity indexes among the three visual conditions were made using a repeated-measures one-way ANOVA, and a post-hoc test (Steel-Dwass's test) was used to determine the source of the significant effect. For the statistical analyses of the two classified groups by the results of the similarity index, Wilcoxon signed-ranks test was used to make comparisons with the traditional parameters. Results The means and standard deviations of the calculated similarity index, which imply the dynamical closeness between EO and each successive task, are given in Table 1. There was a significant difference between EOEO which is the reference trial for this study, and EOOKS in similarity Y (ANOVA; F=5.99, P<0.05). Since this result reflects that the dynamical closeness between the EO condition and the successive EO trial is statistically different from that between EO and the successive OKS condition, OKS could induce the striking effect on dynamical properties of the postural control system in the anteroposterior direction. However, in the lateral direction, the statistical difference between the aforementioned comparison caused by a large standerd deviation cannot Table 1 Similarity index (EO eyes open, EC eyes closed, OKS optokinetic stimulation) EO-EO EO-EC EO-OKS Similarity X Similarity Y 0.859€0.121 0.929€0.100 0.755€0.272 0.926€0.123 0.892€0.101 0.804€0.197* *Significant difference between EO-EO and EO-OKS: P<0.05 be seen. Regarding the influence of the nonvision condition on dynamical properties, it should be noted that there were no significant differences between EO-EO and EO-EC. This result reflects that the removal of visual information does not provide any changes of the postural control dynamics. Since there were large variances of similarity index in EO-OKS, a histogram of similarity index in each set trial is given in Fig. 2. The distribution of these data showed that the variances of similarity index in EO-OKS trials increase compared with that of either EO-EO or EO-EC. On the basis of this result, we divided the subjects into two subpopulations, compared by the results of the standard trial of EO-EO: group 1, where the values of similarity index in both X and Y are within the mean of the value in EO-EO –2 SD, i.e., similarity X>0.617 and 5 total length and Y length, none were found for either X length or area. Discussion Fig. 3a–d Group means and standard deviations for conventional parameters: a total length; b X length; c Y length; and d the area of the 90% confidence ellipse. **Statistically significant differences at P<0.05; minus sign statistical comparisons were not significant similarity Y>0.680, respectively; and group 2, where the values in either X or Y are below the abovementioned limits. According to this division, group 1 consisted of 12 subjects (3 women and 9 men, aged 24–45 years, mean 31.5 years) and group 2 consisted of 11 men (aged 24– 40 years, mean 31.5 years). To examine the characteristic differences between the two groups, comparisons were made of traditional parameters. The group means and standard deviations of traditional parameters for the two groups are presented in Fig. 3. For group 1, all of the EO parameters were significantly smaller than those of the other trials (P<0.05). On the other hand, for group 2, there were significant differences between the EO and the OKS condition trials for all parameters except for area. Moreover, in regard to the comparison with EO and EC trials, although significant differences were shown for Our first observation was that the nonlinear analysis of orthostatic posture provided a hidden postural control mechanism, i.e., the similarity index reflected the clinical course of the vestibular compensation process in patients with vestibular neuronitis; also various pathological changes were included in benign paroxysmal positional vertigo which could not be detected by conventional analysis (Sasaki et al. 2001). In the present study we found that visual input affects the postural control system by means of two different patterns. The visual input of OKS affects the dynamics of the postural control system in nearly half of the subjects (group 2) despite showing no significant differences between EO and the other conditions for area as the conventional COP parameter. In contrast, the other subjects (group 1) did not experience any influence on their postural dynamics from lack of vision or OKS; however, they did show significant differences between EO and the other conditions for the all traditional parameters. The first important finding of our analysis reveals that no postural dynamical changes were observed between EO and EC conditions. As is well known, vision significantly affects postural balance; for example, when in the static condition for EC the body sway is always larger than in EO (Paulus et al. 1984; Gagey et al. 1988). In the field of posturography, which deals with nonstationary signals, a number of statistical tests have been proposed in the literature. Most of these tests are applications of linear time-series analysis, implying that the stationarity is defined on the basis of the second moments such as the mean, variance, or power spectrum. Indeed, it is a general test in clinical practice to evaluate the vestibular-spinal reflex with the patient's eyes closed, in order to eliminate the role of vision (Romberg's test). However, our findings showed that the complexity of the postural control system did not change, suggesting that the nonvision condition did not produce any striking effect on the postural control system. Instead, the EO condition caused a decrease in the stochastic activity of the postural control system, which may have originated mainly from stiffness in the musculoskeletal system. This observation is strengthened by previous works; e.g., De Luca et al. (1982) have demonstrated that fluctuations are always present in mechanical output of skeletal muscles, and Collins and De Luca (1995) have reported that visual input principally causes a decrease in the level of muscle activity across the joints of the lower limbs, which produces a decrease in the effective stochastic activity of the open-loop control mechanism. A second novel finding of our analysis was that, contrary to group 1, in group 2 not only were there no changes of dynamics in the EC condition, but also no differences between EO and EC with area as a conven- 6 tional parameter, indicating postural blindness, implying that visual information was not used to maintain balance. Under certain conditions (Bizzo 1993), the area measures the precision of the control of orthostatic posture; however, the other parameters, i.e., total length, X length, and Y length, actually reflect a summation of the body's segmental actions, including stochastic and noise-like fluctuations. The previous report suggests that postural blindness indicates that standardizing visual information is being abnormally integrated into the multimodal system that controls orthostatic posture (Gagey and Toupet 1991). Collins and De Luca (1995), on the other hand, hypothesize that postural blindness causes the visual system to affect the output of the proprioceptive and vestibular system, via gain modulation. We infer that in group 2 the noise-like fluctuations were suppressed by using the gain modulation of the other sensory system, which is not sufficient for the alteration of dynamics. Furthermore, in group 2, apparent changes of dynamics caused by OKS were exhibited, despite no significant differences in area. Conversely, the subjects in group 1 did not show any dynamical changes during OKS conditions, whereas they did show significant increase in postural sway compared with the EO condition for all conventional parameters. Previous studies (Dichgans et al. 1972; Kapteyn and Bles 1977; van Asten et al. 1988; Previc 1992) have reported that human upright standing perceives a shift of the gravitational vertical and postural change when exposed to roll motion of the visual surroundings. When subjects observe the world to be moving, they perceive themselves to be moving in the opposite direction. The sensation of self-motion during large-field visual motion stimulation, namely CV, is a common visual perception, from which visual-vestibular interaction can be produced. To further understand CV, a study using new techniques to examine PET activation on visual self-motion perception demonstrated a reciprocal activation-deactivation of visual and vestibular cortical areas during CV, i.e., OKS during CV induces not only activation of bilateral medial parieto-occpital visual areas but also deactivation simultaneously of the parietoinsular vestibular cortex (Brandt et al. 1998). Such a mechanism may protect visual perception of self-motion from potential vestibular mismatches caused by involuntary head accelerations during locomotion (Brandt et al. 1998). Furthermore, since the parietoinsular vestibular cortex not only receives bilateral vestibular input from the vestibular nuclei, but also, in turn, projects it directly down to the vestibular nuclei, corticofugal feedback during OKS must modulate the vestibular brainstem network (Brandt and Dieterich 1999). Concerning the postural changes induced by a moving visual surround, traditional measurement of postural sway during moving surround in the roll plane recorded a strong deviation in the direction of stimulus motion (Kapteyn and Bles 1977; Lestienne et al. 1977; Previc 1992). But COP measures actually reflect a summation of the body's segmental action. The postural control systems that include multireflex feedback loops constitute the multilink network. Keshner and Kenyon (2000), when examining the body segmental stabilization using a virtual environment, report that large magnitudes of motion in head and trunk, despite small amplitudes and frequent phase reversals in the ankles, are caused by segmental proprioceptive inputs and ground reaction forces rather than by the visual-vestibular signals. Asten et al. (1988) have stated that the texture in the stimulus pattern has a marked effect on the control of postural balance and that the postural responses to a moving surround can be considered as being a linear, 2nd-order low-pass system with a cutoff frequency at approximately 0.5 Hz. Conversely, Dijkstra et al. (1994) have described that postural responses cannot be understood simply in terms of minimization of retinal slip. The recognition of visual stimulation in visual cortex areas is so important for postural changes that the central nervous system generates movement. These movements correspond to nonlinear dynamics that possess limit cycle attractors, which match the visual motion in amplitude and frequency. We interpret the results of group 1 as suggesting that their increase in postural sway may be due only to increase in the noise-like stochastic activity of the postural control system originating from the network system. In contrast, we hypothesize from the results for group 2 that OKS may induce the striking effect on dynamics properties of the multilink network system involving visual and vestibular cortex related to selfmotion perception, which acts to decrease the stochastic activity in order to correct disturbed posture. We also found that the other conventional parameters for group 2, i.e., total length, X length, and Y length, showed significant differences between EO and the other conditions despite showing no significant increase in area, suggesting that the increase in the other parameters may reflect the increase in stochastic activity of the postural control system. In future investigations, surrogate data techniques (Theiler et al. 1992) will be needed to confirm the significance of visual effect on the postural control system. Surrogate data sets are obtained by phase randomization of the Fourier transform of the data, then an inverse transform is performed to regenerate a time series. Furthermore, we will concentrate on elucidating the effects of vestibular and proprioceptive input on the nonlinear postural control system. Such studies will be helpful in clarifying the classic basic mechanism of human orthostatic posture. 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U.S. Space Budgets
U.S. Government Cuts Hurt Space Industrial Base, National Security
The Space Foundation (July 2014): Tracking by the foundation reveals a global drop in government space expenditures in 2013 — all driven by a 9.4 percent decline in U.S. government space spending. On a global scale, all space spending rose to $314 billion in the same year, reflecting a growth rate of 4 percent, fueled by commercial activity. The U.S. government decline erodes an industrial base that has been unable to respond quickly to Russia's recent threat to halt the export of the RD-180 rocket engine, a fixture in the Atlas V first stage, according to Space Foundation CEO Elliot Holokauahi Pulham. Experts have been sounding a cautionary note on the theme since 1990, he notes.
Human Deep Space Exploration
NRC's "Pathway to Exploration" should start with the Asteroid Redirect Mission
The Space Review (6/30): NASA's ARM mission receives a strong endorsement as a step towards the human exploration of Mars from essayists Louis Friedman, the executive director emeritus of The Planetary Society, and Tom Jones, former NASA astronaut and planetary scientist. The two men who helped to conceive of the mission concept suggest ARM addresses key concerns raised by the recent National Research Council report on the future of U.S. human space exploration. The NRC pointed to the need for sustainability in NASA planning. Friedman and Jones note those efforts are hindered by the absence of an "overriding geopolitical rationale."
The Space Review (6/30): Is China headed for the moon with human explorers? Essayist Dwayne Day explains how past exaggerations of China's lunar ambitions are settling into a slow but steady trek to the moon.
Unmanned Deep Space Exploration
Mars One Wants to Send Your Experiments to the Red Planet
Space.com (6/30): Mars One, the Dutch based non-profit with aggressive plans to settle Mars with humans in the mid-2020s, calls on industry, academia and nonprofits to submit small payload proposals for launching aboard a robotic lander in 2018. The payloads will test technologies for water extraction, solar power production and other assets for early settlers.
A Solar Show With Mixed Reviews
New York Times (6/30): The sun has reached the "max" phase of the 11-year solar cycle with little of the "max" usually associated with peak activity. "Perhaps more than anything else, the current maximum has taught solar scientists that they have a lot more to learn about the sun," the Times reports.
Eavesdropping on ET: Two New Programs Launching to Listen for Aliens
Space.com (6/30): SETI is prepared to kick off two searches using multiple radio telescopes. One is focused on 30 nearby stars, and a second will focus on signals between planets in a single star system.
Habitable Planets: Rack `em and Stack `em Worlds
Coalition for Space Exploration (6/30): Gliese 832c is the nearest and best habitable world candidate to date. Sixteen light years away, Gliese 832 is a red dwarf star. Observations so far suggest the two planets orbiting Gliese 832 are a scaled-down version of our own Solar System. There's an inner potentially Earth-like planet and an outer Jupiter-like giant planet.
Scientific American (6/30): The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft faces a daunting few months: rendezvous with a distant comet, maneuver into orbit, drop a lander onto its target and follow the comet around the sun.
Low Earth Orbit
Launch of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 Scrubbed
NASA (7/1): Efforts to launch NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory mission satellite from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., were scrubbed early Tuesday due to difficulties with a launch pad water system. The water lowers the damaging acoustic forces that accompany the lift off.
Orbital's Antares Rocket with Orb-2 Mission for NASA Slips to July 11
SpaceflightInsider (6/30): Orbital Sciences looks to July 11 for the next commercial re-supply mission to the International Space Station. A series of changes in the launch date followed the loss of a rocket engine assigned to an early 2015 flight during a test firing earlier this year.
Running in Space: New 'ForceShoe' to Monitor Astronaut Exercise
Space.com (6/30): New "ForceShoes" for astronauts aboard the International Space Station are helping scientists understand more about how the human body responds to weightlessness. The ForceShoes, developed by the 3D motion tracking company Xsens, look like electronically enhanced sandals and measure forces along three axes: up and down, front to back and side to side, the website reports.
Brought to you by the Coalition for Space Exploration, CSExtra is a daily compilation of space industry news selected from hundreds of online media resources. The Coalition is not the author or reporter of any of the stories appearing in CSExtra and does not control and is not responsible for the content of any of these stories. The content available through CSExtra contains links to other websites and domains which are wholly independent of the Coalition, and the Coalition makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy, completeness or authenticity of the information contained in any such site or domain and does not pre-screen or approve any content. The Coalition does not endorse or receive any type of compensation from the included media outlets and is not responsible or liable in any way for any content of CSExtra or for any loss, damage or injury incurred as a result of any content appearing in CSExtra. For information on the Coalition, visit www.space.com or contact us via e-mail at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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"Students at the Languages and Literature Faculty of the university can learn Istanbul Turkish if they want to, but we can study plans to offer it as a second language," said University of Tehran President Mahmoud Nili Ahmadabadi on Tuesday.
He made the remark during a meeting with Turkish Ambassador to Iran Derya Ors at the University of Tehran's headquarters.
'There is huge cooperation between the University of Tehran and Turkey,' said UT president, stressing that Tehran and Ankara will join scientific efforts to increase their communication.
He also called for student exchange programs between the two countries.
Follow us on Twitter @IrnaEnglish
Tehran, May 21, IRNA- The University of Tehran says it will study plans to teach Turkish language as part of efforts to increase bilateral academic cooperation between Iran and Turkey.


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The link below is an article from Crain's Detroit Business. The article discusses the Balmoral Building development plans. The Balmoral Building will be developed on a vacant piece of land at Woodward and Brown Street in Birmingham, MI. The building will Continue reading "Crain's Detroit Business Article – Balmoral Building – Birmingham, MI"
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Oil and gas joint venture not in violation of the Competition Act
The Supreme Court of Canada refused leave to appeal the Alberta Court of Appeal's decision in 321665 Alberta Ltd. v. Husky Oil Operations Ltd. (2013 ABCA 221), which found that in certain circumstances, legitimate oil and gas joint ventures should not be considered anti-competitive action in breach of the Competition Act RSC 1985, c C-34.
In 1995 Husky Oil Operations Ltd. (Husky) and Exxon Mobil Canada Ltd. (Mobil) discussed ways to reduce inefficiencies and costs by using a single source fuel hauler to service two of their closely located facilities in Northern Alberta. Two fuel haulers were considered, and only one contract was awarded. The company that was not selected suffered significant financial hardship, and made a claim that Husky and Mobil had violated section 45 of the Competition Act by the undue lessening of competition.
The trial judge found the Competition Act was breached, and awarded damages to the small trucking company. The Court of Appeal overturned the decision, finding instead that both trucking companies were given a fair opportunity to compete for the fuel hauling contract and that it was not wrong for Husky and Mobil to find better ways to manage operations, reduce their costs and increase efficiencies. This particular joint venture was not intended to hinder the competition of the fuel suppliers, but instead was formed for a legitimate business purpose. In such circumstances, oil and gas companies should not be prevented from entering into joint ventures that streamline operations.
The application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court from the judgment of the Court of Appeal was dismissed on June 14, 2013.
The decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal can be read here: http://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abca/doc/2013/2013abca221/2013abca221.html
Wednesday, April 09, 2014


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Typically, people who use either the OpenHAB or Home Assistant open source smart home platforms tend to run the software on their own computer or a low-cost Raspberry Pi. Can you actually run these on cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud or … [Read more...]
We need a standards-based solution for smart home device and automation backups
News this week of Comcast shutting down Stringify has surely upset the service's user base. Granted it's a small group of affected users - Stringify had 100,000+ downloads in the Google Play Store compared to more than 5 million IFTTT installs, for … [Read more...]
Is Mistral a next-gen mesh network Google Home Hub with ZigBee, or maybe even Thread?
Google appears to be developing a next-generation Home hub that will include mesh Wi-Fi, a ZigBee or thread-based radio and better audio quality according to the evidence I've found in Google's code base. The code I've unearthed refers to "Mistral", … [Read more...]
On-device speech recognition on smart speakers: Only half of the cloudless smart home equation
When Google announced its "end-to-end, all-neural, on-device speech recognizer" for the Gboard phone keyboard two weeks ago, I was initially excited. That's because speech recognition can now run locally on Gboard, even without a network … [Read more...]
Switching hubs? Here's why you should always remove smart devices from the old one
I was doing some research on how to back up smart home hub configurations (spoiler alert: you generally can't) when I had a startling revelation. Several of the devices in my home were actively sending data to Samsung's SmartThings servers. Why was … [Read more...]