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Several upcoming NASA missions will use lasers to increase data transmission from space. Thought your Internet speeds were slow? Try being a space scientist for a day. The vast distances involved will throttle data rates to a trickle. You're lucky if a spacecraft can send more than a few megabits per second (Mbps) - a pittance even by dial-up standards. But we might be on the cusp of a change. Just as going from dial-up to broadband revolutionized the Internet and made high-resolution photos and streaming video a given, NASA may be ready to undergo a similar "broadband" moment in coming years. The key to that data revolution will be lasers. For almost 60 years, the standard way to "talk" to spacecraft has been with radio waves, which are ideal for long distances. But optical communications, in which data is beamed over laser light, can increase that rate by as much as 10 to 100 times. High data rates will allow researchers to gather science faster, study s

A new study has shown that taking vitamin D supplements, especially in small doses during fall and winter, will help prevent catching colds, influenza and other respiratory diseases. The study titled,   Vitamin D supplementation to prevent acute respiratory tract infections: Systematic review and meta-analysis of individual participant data ,  analyzed the data from 25 clinical trials in 14 countries and on 11,321 participants, aged 0 to 95 years. “The bottom line is that the protective effects of vitamin D supplementation are strongest in those who have the lowest vitamin D levels, and when supplementation is given daily or weekly rather than in more widely-spaced doses,” lead researcher, Adrian Martineau, said in a statement. Boosting immunity The research team at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) concluded that vitamin D protects the human body against respiratory infections, including bronchitis and pneumonia, by boosting levels of antibiotic-like peptides in the lungs. T