Many have lamented the seeming decline of the US space program. While we’re not expecting an immediate return to the halcyon days, the President’s proposed federal budget for fiscal 2014 could see some renewed ambition. NASA’s slice of the pie includes a plan that would improve detection of near-Earth asteroids, send a solar-powered robot ship (like the NASA concept above) to capture one of the space rocks and tow it back to a stable orbit near Earth, where researchers could study it up close. The agency would have humans setting foot on the asteroid by 2025, or even as soon as 2021. It’s a grand goal to say the least, but we’d potentially learn more about solar propulsion and defenses against asteroid collisions. If NASA’s plans mostly involve the future, the US Air Force budget is looking into the past. It’s setting aside $35 million for a long-discussed resurrection of the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite, also known as DSCOVR — a vehicle that was scuppered in 2001 due to cost overruns, among other factors. Run by NOAA once aloft, the modernized satellite would focus on warning the Earth about incoming solar winds. That’s just one of the satellite’s original missions, but the November 2014 launch target is relatively realistic — and we’ll need it when the satellite currently fulfilling the role is overdue for a replacement. Filed under: Robots , Science Comments Via: Space.com Source: NASA , AP (Yahoo)
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US budget has NASA planning to capture an asteroid, USAF reviving DSCOVR (video)
First time accepted submitter jds91md writes “Scientists at Stanford have developed a technique to see the structural detail of actual brains with resolution down to the cellular and axonal/dendritic level. The process called CLARITY allows a ‘transparent’ view of the brain without having to slice or section it in any way. From the article: ‘Even more important, experts say, is that unlike earlier methods for making the tissue of brains and other organs transparent, the new process, called Clarity by its inventors, preserves the biochemistry of the brain so well that researchers can test it over and over again with chemicals that highlight specific structures within a brain and provide clues to its past activity. The researchers say this process may help uncover the physical underpinnings of devastating mental disorders like schizophrenia, autism, post-traumatic stress disorder and others.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Have you ever been clicking along a particularly stunning stretch of road in Google Street View and thought: damn, how awesome it would be if you could stitch all these individual images together and turn them into a video? Well… sit down. Clear your schedule. There’s something you need to see. Read more… 
