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September 18, 2014

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ByMarciaDunn TheAssociatedPress CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. Mars,getreadyforanother visitor or two. This weekend, NASA's Maven spacecraft will reach the red planet fol- lowing a 10-month jour- ney spanning 442 million miles. If all goes well, the robotic explorer will hit the brakes and slip into Martian orbit Sunday night. "I'm all on pins and needles. This is a critical event," NASA's director of planetary science, Jim Green, said Wednesday. Maven is not designed to land; rather, it will study Mars' upper atmo- sphere from orbit. Hot on Maven's heels is India's first interplanetary spacecraft, Mangalyaan, which is due to go into or- bit around Mars two days after Maven. Scientists want to learn how Mars went from a warm, wet world that may have harbored microbial life during its first billion years, to the cold, barren place of today. Maven should help explain the atmospheric changes that led to this rad- ical climate change. "Where did the water go? Where did the CO2 go from that early environ- ment?" said chief inves- tigator Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colora- do's Laboratory for Atmo- spheric and Space Physics in Boulder. These escaping gases likely went down into the Martian crust and up into the upper atmosphere and out into space. Jakosky and his team hope to as- certain whether the cli- matic about-face resulted from the sun's stripping away of the early atmo- spheric water and carbon dioxide. "We measure these things today even though the processes we're inter- ested in operated billions of years ago," he said. NASA launched Maven from Cape Canaveral last November on the $671 mil- lion mission, the first dedi- cated to studying the Mar- tian upper atmosphere. As of Wednesday, the space- craft was less than 750,000 miles from its destination; Maven's view of the red planet would be roughly equivalent to a baseball about 52 feet away. "So Mars is really grow- ing right now as we ap- proach, just four days away," said David Mitchell, NASA project manager. The boxy, solar-winged craft is as long as a school bus and as hefty as a 5,400-pound SUV. NASA expects a scien- tific bonus from Maven thanks to Comet Siding Spring. The nucleus of the comet, discovered just last year, will pass within 82,000 miles of Mars on Oct. 19. NASA initially feared the trailing comet dust might jeopardize Ma- ven, but the risk now ap- pears to be minimal, Ja- kosky said. The space- craft will observe Siding Spring, providing it can do so safely, and analyze the Martian atmosphere be- fore and after the comet passes by. "I'm told the odds of having an approach that close to Mars are about 1 in 1 million years, so it's really luck that we get the opportunity here," Ja- kosky said. Maven — short for Mars Atmosphere and Vola- tile Evolution — is a scout for the human explor- ers whom NASA hopes to send in the decades ahead. It's NASA's 21st mission to Mars since the 1960s. There are three space- craft now circling Mars — one European and two U.S. — and two NASA rov- ers exploring the surface. "For humans to go to Mars, it's not like 'Star Trek.' It's not like 'go where no man has gone before,' " Green told reporters. "It's really the planetary scientists that are blaz- ing the trail for us to un- derstand everything about Mars that we need to for humans to be able to land safely on Mars and explore and journey around the planet."_ Online: NASA: http://www. nasa.gov/mission_pages/ maven/main/ 'CRITICAL EVENT' NASA'sMavenspacecra to reach Mars this weekend JOHNRAOUX/THEASSOCIATEDPRESSFILE In this Friday file photo, technicians work on NASA's next Mars-bound spacecra , the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN), at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. "F or h um an s t o go t o M ar s, i t' s not l ik e ' St ar Tr ek .' I t' s n ot li ke ' go w her e n o ma n h as g on e be fo re. ' " — J im G re en , N AS A' s di re ctor o f pl an etar y s ci en ce By Jonathan Lemire The Associated Press NEWYORK Keisha St. John has been singing at some of the most famous jazz clubs in the nation for more than five decades. She was paid $50 a night when she sang in "Three Guys and a Doll" in 1958. Now, at age 75 and nearing retirement, she has no pen- sion to fall back on — and is asking the clubs to help out. "Because jazz is consid- ered the national treasure of America, there should be a greater concern for each musician who has paid a dear price to learn his or her craft," she testified Wednes- day in front of the New York City Council. "We demand the just rewards of receiving a pension in our old age." St. John, several other musicians and a represen- tative of the Associated Mu- sicians of Greater New York Local 802 labor union asked the city council for help. Un- like musicians who appear on Broadway or those who sing at the Metropolitan Opera, jazz singers in New York City don't receive ben- efits. "Jazz musicians need pensions," said trumpeter Jimmy Owens, 70. "They need to enjoy the same benefits received by their brother and sister musi- cians on Broadway and in the symphonic field. The need is real." John O'Connor, the union's vice president, told the council it would cost jazz clubs about $22 per performance to create a pension fund for the city's aging musicians. JAZZ CLUBS Mu si ci an s fe ar p ov er ty i n re ti re me nt By Matt Sedensky The Associated Press WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. Americans suffer needless discomfort and undergo unwanted and costly care as they die, in part because of a medical system ruled by "perverse incentives" for aggressive care and not enough conversation about what people want, accord- ing to a report released Wednesday. Though people repeat- edly stress a desire to die at home, free from pain, the opposite often happens, the Institute of Medicine found in its "Dying in America" report. Most people do not document their wishes on end-of-life care and even those who do face a medical system poorly suited to give them the death they want, the authors found. The result is breathing and feeding tubes, power- ful drugs and other treat- ment that often fails to ex- tend life and can make the final days more unpleas- ant. The report blamed a fee-for-service medical sys- tem in which "perverse in- centives" exist for doctors and hospitals to choose the most aggressive care; inade- quate training for those car- ing for the dying and phy- sicians who default to life- saving treatment because they worry about liability. "It's not an intentional thing. It's a systemic prob- lem," said David Walker, the former U.S. comptrol- ler general, who co-chaired the committee that issued the report. Advance directives in- cluding living wills have been unpopular and in- effective, the report said. It urged repeated conver- sations about patients' wishes beginning far ear- lier than many would think — perhaps as teenagers — and continuing the talks throughout life. "The fee-for-service model, the lack of coordina- tion between medical and social services, the chal- lenges that individuals face in finding a provider who's willing and knowledgeable to speak with them about death and dying all con- spire against them coming up with the right individual plan," said Dr. Philip Pizzo, a co-chair with Walker. The report praised pro- grams in palliative care, which focuses on treating pain, minimizing side ef- fects, coordinating care among doctors and ensur- ing concerns of patients and their families are ad- dressed. This type of care has expanded rapidly in the past several decades and is now found in a majority of U.S. hospitals, but the re- port said many physicians have no training in it. In many ways, the report is a repudiation of the con- troversy created by the term "death panel" in response to the President Barack Obama's health care law. The claim centered on the government saving money by deciding who would live and who would die. In fact, the 500-page re- port authored by 21 experts said the very type of end-of- life care Americans say they want would shrink medical bills and reduce the govern- mental burden. "They will have a higher quality of life and it's very likely to be less expensive," said Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Oregon, a frequent voice on end-of-life issues who reviewed the report. "But the main key here is that we should be giving people what they want." 'PERVERSE INCENTIVES' Study: Americans endure unwanted care near death PAID ADVERTISEMENT | NEWS | REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2014 4 B

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