Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Microsoft confirms Windows 8.1 is a free upgrade


Windows 8.1
Microsoft’s Tami Reller spoke at a JP Mogan technology conference this afternoon. The big news of the day: Windows 8.1 will be a free upgrade when it’s released later this year.
There have been plenty of rumors about Windows 8.1 pricing leading up to today. Some said free, others expected an inexpensive Apple-style price tag. Thankfully, Reller has cleared the air and we can focus on things like features and a release date instead of wondering if we’ll need to start saving our couch cushion change.
No specific launch date was given, but Reller told the crowd that Microsoft “knows when the holidays are.” With a developer preview of Windows 8.1 expected at Build next month, it seems reasonable that the 8.1 update would land just ahead of the shopping rush — possibly some time in October. And no, she didn’t get into specific details like whether or not the Start Button really is coming back or if you’ll be able to bypass the Start Screen. She did, however, offer another hint that Windows 8.1 will be showing up on iPad Mini-sized devices.
Reller noted that Windows 8 is a perfect fit on PCs of all sizes, from desktops and all-in-ones right down to “the smallest tablets.” She didn’t exactly let the cat out of the bag with that quote, obviously. Microsoft all but confirmed as much back when it changed the Windows 8 device certification guidelines. Later, a premature product placement from one of Microsoft’s biggest Windows partners seemed to have spilled the beans. Amazon briefly listed the Iconia W3on its digital shelves. The unannounced Atom-powered tablet was shown as running Windows 8 and having a 7-inch 1280 x 800 display. The page has since been pulled down, but that leak, coupled with Ms. Reller’s comments today, should be all the confirmation we need.
Since you’re not going to have to spend any cash on the Windows  8.1 upgrade, maybe you can justify dropping $300 on a small Windows tablet this fall instead.

Raspberry Pi camera boards are now available for the price of a Raspberry Pi


RasPi camera
While you’re sitting around, patiently awaiting the inevitable Raspberry Pi spec upgrade, not knowing what else to do with the little guy, the Pi Foundation has benevolently released the official camera attachment. Now, while your Model B is still sitting pretty at 512MB of RAM with a 700MHz CPU, you can at least take up photography to pass the time.
The camera board slips into that thin connector located between the HDMI and Ethernet ports. The installation process is actually a bit delicate, so the Foundation made a handy video to ensure sure we all don’t break our new toy.
The installation process does seem a little tedious, as you’re plugging a flimsy ribbon into a thin slot, need to flip down a clamp while keeping the ribbon steady, and also need to keep the extremely lightweight Pi in place while you perform it all.
For the price of $25 — the price of a Model A Raspberry Pi — the 5MP camera isn’t a slouch, capable of recording 1080p video.
In order to make your tiny, adorable computer recognize the new camera attachment, you need to update the firmware, then boot into the configuration settings and enable the camera. Save the settings, then reboot. The Foundation has a list of commands with which the camera can be used, including recording video and snapping still photography. The camera is also able to stream its feed over the internet, using another set of commands.
If the RasPi is a fun little board for you to casually mess around with, and experimenting with the new camera is either a little too time-consuming or complex for your capabilities or attention span, don’t you worry. The RasPi community is quick to move, and you’ll have a bunch of tutorials and plug-and-play project ideas sooner rather than later.

Joe Biden floats idea of a tax on violent video games and other media


Joe Biden
In a meeting about gun control with national religious leaders like Rev. Billy Graham, Joe Biden uttered the words that would flood the gaming subreddits and seep through to the rest of social media. According to an attendee of the meeting, Biden “floated the idea that media and entertainment that portray violence should be subject to a special tax, with the proceeds going to help victims and their families.” He also said that there was “no restriction on the ability to do that, there’s no legal reason why they couldn’t.”
This is the ACLU’s fault (of course), since their bulldog attitude toward these sorts of initiatives make it totally safe for politicians to bluff about taking them up. Does Joe Biden have a plan in place, a congressional vote chart drawn out on a whiteboard in his office? Of course not; this is utterly meaningless wind, since everybody in that room is well aware that no such tax will ever be introduced. It’s been tried before, and the opposition to it is so strong that you can now even float the idea of a content-based artist tax and it’s such a non-starter idea that it usually has no fallout at all. It’s an issue that’s only useful in plastic-faced meetings like this one.
The Obama administration has already made it clear, however, that violent media are a source of worry in a more general sense. They’ve funded research into the effects of exposure to violent games in thewake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, at least hypothesizing the same link made explicit by Biden’s gamer-reparation plan. This might be more reasonable if that precise issue hadn’t been studied many times already. Hillary Clinton was banging the same drum for many years until she got enough power to concern herself with more important things, even going so far as to maintain a brief association with Jack Thompson.
These are issues picked up and given a cursory run through the docket. A few speaking appearances, fundraising dinners, a likely bogus study or two, and problems can go away. They ignore the legal, constitutional, and popular opposition that has demolished many similar ideas in the past because there is no actual thought of bringing them to fruition, these days. It’s just wind, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any less repulsive to hear said aloud.

Google CEO Larry Page suffering from vocal cord paralysis


larry_page_625
If you’ve ever listened to Google CEO Larry Page speak, you can’t help but notice his voice sounds a little unusual. There is a very good reason for that, and it’s one Page has decided to come out and explain due to a recent illness that has made it worse.
Larry Page is suffering from vocal cord paralysis. It first started when he was just 14 years old and suffered from a bad cold. Everyone’s voice can sound different when they are ill, but once fully recovered Page’s voice didn’t recover as expected and remained what he describes as “weaker.” Tests carried out by a doctor confirmed he had left vocal cord paralysis. That means the cord still moves, but not as you’d expect.
It was unclear at the time if there was some relationship between the bad cold and the paralysis occurring. It could have just been coincidence and there was no confirmation of the cause from Page’s doctors.
This all happened 25 years ago, but last year Page’s voice got worse again, and for exactly the same reason. He got a bad cold again, his voice was affected, and it never recovered. But this time it was his right vocal cord that had been paralyzed. This has resulted in his voice becoming much softer, and accounts for why we haven’t seen him doing much work in front of a camera or involving lots of talking lately.
It turns out vocal cord paralysis or paresis is very rare and there isn’t much in the way of information or treatments to improve the condition. So Larry Page has decided to take action and is funding a research program headed up by Dr. Steven Zeitels from the Harvard Medical School. It is hoped this research will not only increase our understanding of paresis, but also lead to new treatments for those who suffer with it.

Printed robot worm capable of folding itself together


Printworm
While the world of robotics hasn’t exactly caught up to where entertainment media thought it could be by now, it’s still rolling along at an impressive pace. However, rather than creating autonomous Terminators and C-3PO, the industry tends to move in a more specialized direction. Case in point, this new palm-sized robotic inchworm created by a team at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. It can’t reassemble itself if you blow it up or melt it, but this printed little guy can fold itself together.
Since the robot is printed, it begins life as something of a flat sheet. Anyone that has attended elementary school and made one of those paper balloons or baskets knows what comes next. Thanks to acombination of hinges and shape memory polymers, the robot is able to fold itself together, and survive the process.
Unfortunately, the robot can’t assemble whenever it wants, and requires the hinges to be heated in order to fold itself. From there, the robot is still just a casing, but the team can easily add a battery and motor. A pick-and-place robot is meant to position the heaters, battery, and motor into the bare body, but at the moment, the team does it manually.
Perhaps the best nugget to take away from the Harvard team’s design is that the material that causes the robots to contract when heated is the magical Shrinky Dink. Instead of a colored-pencil figurine of Mickey Mouse, though, the Shrinky sheet creates the body of a crawling robotic inchworm.
Officially, the team’s next goal is to build a more complicated robot that can assemble itself without any outside help, then can walk away when built.

Printed robot worm capable of folding itself together


Printworm
While the world of robotics hasn’t exactly caught up to where entertainment media thought it could be by now, it’s still rolling along at an impressive pace. However, rather than creating autonomous Terminators and C-3PO, the industry tends to move in a more specialized direction. Case in point, this new palm-sized robotic inchworm created by a team at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. It can’t reassemble itself if you blow it up or melt it, but this printed little guy can fold itself together.
Since the robot is printed, it begins life as something of a flat sheet. Anyone that has attended elementary school and made one of those paper balloons or baskets knows what comes next. Thanks to acombination of hinges and shape memory polymers, the robot is able to fold itself together, and survive the process.
Unfortunately, the robot can’t assemble whenever it wants, and requires the hinges to be heated in order to fold itself. From there, the robot is still just a casing, but the team can easily add a battery and motor. A pick-and-place robot is meant to position the heaters, battery, and motor into the bare body, but at the moment, the team does it manually.
Perhaps the best nugget to take away from the Harvard team’s design is that the material that causes the robots to contract when heated is the magical Shrinky Dink. Instead of a colored-pencil figurine of Mickey Mouse, though, the Shrinky sheet creates the body of a crawling robotic inchworm.
Officially, the team’s next goal is to build a more complicated robot that can assemble itself without any outside help, then can walk away when built.

Haswell’s low power states made possible by on-die voltage regulator


Haswell_FIVR_625
Intel is expected to launch Haswell processors next month that bring with them a number of improvements over the Ivy bridge chips they replace. As well as much improved integrated GPUs and an expected 10% gain in CPU performance, Haswell chips come with some major power savings.
So great are these power savings in certain power states (notably C6 and C7 states) your PSU may not be able to cope, meaning a power supply upgrade. But how has Intel managed to make such gains in lowering power use? The answer seems to be the integration of a voltage regulator module on-die.
This is the first time that Intel has managed to fully integrate the voltage regulator on to a processor. As well as being 50x smaller than the motherboard bound regulators that have come before, it also allows the chip to enter power saving states much more quickly as well as control CPU, GPU, the memory controller and I/O voltages more efficiently. The end result is significantly lower power draw and the ability to move into power saving states not previously possible.
Intel has been planning to fully integrate the voltage regulator for several years now, but has only now got it to work for Haswell. It doesn’t come without a negative, though. As the voltage regulator is now on-die, your CPU cooling setup has to cope with the additional heat it will produce. That could potentially limit the overclocking headroom of Haswell chips depending on just how hot the regulator gets.
If overclocking isn’t a major concern, which for the majority of people it isn’t, Haswell should be viewed as the CPU to have in your next laptop. The power savings on offer means your battery is going to last that much longer without compromising on performance.

Haswell’s low power states made possible by on-die voltage regulator


Haswell_FIVR_625
Intel is expected to launch Haswell processors next month that bring with them a number of improvements over the Ivy bridge chips they replace. As well as much improved integrated GPUs and an expected 10% gain in CPU performance, Haswell chips come with some major power savings.
So great are these power savings in certain power states (notably C6 and C7 states) your PSU may not be able to cope, meaning a power supply upgrade. But how has Intel managed to make such gains in lowering power use? The answer seems to be the integration of a voltage regulator module on-die.
This is the first time that Intel has managed to fully integrate the voltage regulator on to a processor. As well as being 50x smaller than the motherboard bound regulators that have come before, it also allows the chip to enter power saving states much more quickly as well as control CPU, GPU, the memory controller and I/O voltages more efficiently. The end result is significantly lower power draw and the ability to move into power saving states not previously possible.
Intel has been planning to fully integrate the voltage regulator for several years now, but has only now got it to work for Haswell. It doesn’t come without a negative, though. As the voltage regulator is now on-die, your CPU cooling setup has to cope with the additional heat it will produce. That could potentially limit the overclocking headroom of Haswell chips depending on just how hot the regulator gets.
If overclocking isn’t a major concern, which for the majority of people it isn’t, Haswell should be viewed as the CPU to have in your next laptop. The power savings on offer means your battery is going to last that much longer without compromising on performance.

BlackBerry Messenger coming to iOS and Android this summer


BBM iOS Android
In a move that BlackBerry hopes will cast a tall shadow on iMessage and Google Talk, their BlackBerry Messenger is soon to be available on iOS and Android.
For a long time, the one big thing that kept users tied to the BlackBerry platform was its messaging platform. Across an entire company, or teams for a specific project, BBM is a fantastic product. It was such a big deal that Apple and Google both added features to products like iMessage and G+ Messenger specifically to compete with this service. While there may be alternatives to BBM, many feel that there’s no true alternative. To keep people focused on the BBM service, today at BlackBerry Live it was announced that iOS and Android users would soon be able to use the service.
All versions of iOS, and any Android phone or tablet running Android 4.0 or higher will have access to the BBM platform. Thorsten Heins spoke briefly about the planned rollout of the software, making it clear that while the best BBM experience would be on a BlackBerry, the team would continue to release features to the other platforms and make them a powerful part of the BBM ecosystem. This initial rollout doesn’t include things like BBM video, but instead focuses on group chat and the recently announced Channels feature. Channels will allow BBM users to get together and talk about common topics, which furthers the BlackBerry goal of making their products more mainstream.
Having more users on BlackBerry Messenger, especially for free, places a heavy weight on the company. If the service doesn’t work as well on iOS or Android as it does on BlackBerry, there won’t be a reason to use the service. On the other hand, if it works just as well on Android and iPhone, there’s less reason to stick with BlackBerry. The rollout and future feature released will be a big deal for the company that has relied on BBM as a selling point for so long.

BlackBerry unveils the Q5, a budget QWERTY phone


BlackBerry Q5
BlackBerry’s annual developer conference kicked off this morning with CEO Thorsten Heins unveiling the company’s latest BB10 smartphone for emerging markets, the Q5.
The BlackBerry Live conference, taking place only a few months after the reveal of BlackBerry 10 and the new Z10 and Q10 smartphones, sent a clear message that the company is interested in staying in the mobile ecosystem. Blackberry’s focus on business and government environments proved unsuccessful as Android and iOS have dominated the personal market, but now the company will turn to the average consumer with an all new experience. In keeping with the decision to focus on consumers, BlackBerry has announced the Q5 smartphones for budget buyers and emerging markets.
blackberry q5 trio
The BlackBerry Q5 is a smaller, more colorful Q10 designed for younger users who are more interested in a colorful smartphone. The phone relies on a 3.1-inch touch screen and the all too familiar BlackBerry keyboard in a thinner profile than the current flagship BlackBerry. The focus for the phone is BlackBerry’s camera software and the full keyboard. There’s no mention of specs or price yet, but it’s been made clear that the phone is expected to be available in Europe and Asia starting in July.
Outside of the brightly colored package and thinner profile, the Q5 is described by BlackBerry as being the same as any other BB10 device. This means that BlackBerry could be planning to start advertising BlackBerry Messenger and BBM Video to a younger audience, perhaps in competition with FaceTime and Google Talk. While BB10 is certainly enjoyable to use and the app ecosystem is filled with most of the latest smartphone games, it seems unlikely that this will be enough to attract the younger audience.

10-lane intersection without traffic lights is perfect for driverless cars


intersection
Ever think that the roads we use every day aren’t quite optimized for the amount of traffic on them? That they are unnecessarily slow and often poorly designed? The image above features a traffic flow design that eliminates unnecessary stops from the most complex, busy intersections imaginable.
The design was made by Li Xu, a then 22-year old student at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China. It was first posted in 2011, but I haven’t seen or read examples of it being used, so it seems like the concept has been ignored by the roadway community. And with good reason — asking any human to to navigate this along with dozens of other cars would be asking for trouble. With driverless, robot-driven cars though, the whole drive could be done smoothly without ever stopping, supposing the cars were clever enough to negotiate with each other and not grind to a halt given the sheer amount of activity at the meeting of these two massive highways.
Driveless car scanThe 10-lane, traffic light-free intersection uses a clover-leaf pattern to completely eliminate stops, despite the huge amount of cars passing through. Rather than being slowed down with a traffic light, yield sign, or stop sign, each car is given a frictionless path to get where it’s headed. This includes all possible turns and a full U-turn.
The more lanes and traffic on a road, the more complicated things get. The more complicated driving gets, the slower and/or more dangerous it is. But if you go too far in the other direction, there are problems as well. Without rules and restrictions, driving can get dangerous — just drive through an old-school traffic circle and you’ll quickly find out. That wouldn’t be a problem for a driverless car though, as no driver will be reading the paper, sipping his coffee, or dealing with a massive amount of road rage.
Li’s design trades off built-in slowdowns — like stop signs and reversible (aka suicide) lanes — for negotiations between automobiles. You’ll have to yield the right-of-way multiple times while navigating this intersection. This could lead to multicar pileups or it could save huge amounts of time and make the highway larger and more complex than ever. With the driverless car, sufficient sensing, and car-to-car roadway negotiation technology, we could start driving change along with the driver.

Nvidia’s Project Shield available to pre-order on May 20 for $349


NV_Shield_Front_Open_LR
Nvidia has today made two big announcements regarding its gaming handheld known as Project Shield. The first is that the console will now be officially known as simply Shield. The second is that a pre-order date and price has been set for the device.
Shield looks like a gaming controller, but sports a 5-inch 720p touchscreen display, 16GB of on board storage, and runs a Tegra 4 SoC. Tegra 4 is currently classed as the fastest ARM processor in the worldright now through its combination of an ARM Cortex A15 CPU and custom 72-core GeForce GPU. It’s basically going to easily handle any Android game you care to throw at it. The other big feature Shield has is the ability to stream games from a Windows PC, allowing you to play them away from your desk.
Shield will be available to pre-order from Monday, May 20 and ships in June from GameStop, Micro Center, Newegg, and Canada Computers. As you’ve probably predicted, it isn’t cheap. Nvidia wants $349 for Shield, which is more than you’ll pay for a PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U, 3DS, PS Vita, or iPod touch.
Such comparisons may not matter if you genuinely see Shield as filling a gap in your gaming needs. Basically, if you are someone who plays a lot of Android games and would really like to play your Windows games while lying on a sofa, Shield is for you and may be worth the required investment. For everyone else, Shield is a pretty niche item, and an expensive one at that.NV_Shield_Angled_Left_RealBoxing_LR

Monday, May 13, 2013

Windows Blue released to developers in June, to consumers through Windows Store


Windows Blue Start Screen
Windows Blue, the somewhat quick follow-up to Windows 8 otherwise known as Windows 8.1, will be released to developers in June. Windows division head Julie Larson-Green made the announcement today at the Wired Business Conference. She also officially confirmed that a public preview of 8.1 will be available during Microsoft’s Build Conference, which takes place from June 26-28 this year.
Rumors and anonymous sources claimed this would be the case, but now it’s officially confirmed by Microsoft.
So far, Windows 8.1 speculation has been running rampant — perhaps in part because it’s a major upgrade to a Microsoft operating system, but perhaps because Windows 8 hasn’t had the best public perception for some time now, and people are clamoring for something viewed as better. One of the most anticipated features rumored to appear in the final build, is that the OS will provide you with the option to skip the Start Screen, allowing you to boot straight to the desktop without outside help.
Recent leaked builds of Windows 8.1 have revealed that the OS will have more customization options, including themes and colors. It will also bring more options to the formerly-known-as-Metro UI settings panel, some of which were only previously accessible by launching into desktop mode.
In somewhat of an Apple-like fashion, Microsoft also stated that the Windows 8.1 upgrade will be available to consumers in the Windows Store, rather than through a standard update. The company did not give a solid date for the consumer release, so if you’re tired of dealing with Windows 8 but want to stick with the Windows environment, a possible way out may not be too far away.

NASA uses a fleet of satellites to record huge sun eruption


The sun is fascinating to observe due to all the activity present on its surface, and a 4 minute video that let us watch it spin for 3 years is proof of that. NASA used its Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) to capture the footage that made such a video possible, and now it has been used again to capture a huge eruption and coronal mass ejection on the left side of the sun.
Such eruptions are by no means small, and the SDO can only view so much of the ejection. But NASA doesn’t just have one satellite looking at the sun, it has a whole team of them working together known as the Heliophysics fleet. So the data captured by each of these satellites wascompiled and combined to produce the video of the May 1 eruption. You can watch it below:
As you can see, the SDO field of view is quite limited when it comes to viewing an eruption. The rest of the data comes from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO). In the case of STEREO, the eruption was viewed from the far side of the sun as it is a third of an orbit ahead of Earth.
To give you some idea of how powerful this eruption was, you only have to look at what SOHO was able to capture. On board SOHO is a Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronograph (LASCO) made up of three solar coronographs with nested fields of view (named LASCO C1, C2, and C3). Both C2 and C3 observed the eruption. C2 views up to 2.5 million miles out and C3 goes much further to 13.5 million miles. STEREO on the other hand was limited to just 6.3 million miles.
sun_eruption_may1

OpenWorm looks to simulate life, with your help


c. elegans
C. elegans is more important than you. To be fair, the little worm is more important than just about everybody, more important than fruit flies and mice and chimpanzees. The most important model organism is e. coli, the next is yeast, and the next is c. elegans. The world’s most famous nematode came to prominence when researchers noticed that it contains just 302 neurons, making it one of the simplest nervous systems ever observed. From this point on, c. elegans was the model of virtually every basic study into neuron function. If you’re looking to fiddle with an axonal growth gene, you do it in c. elegans first since the simple little thing is so well understood, as are the many ways in which it can die. As such, the worm has been one of the main sources of research for more than forty years.
That kind of knowledge can’t be allowed to go to waste as just a big reference database; the best science is always creative, not descriptive! Recently announced, the OpenWorm project looks to kickstart that creative side by exploiting our comprehensive understanding of the species to let us make a nematode from scratch. It would exist solely in the RAM of the beholders, of course — a purely computational modelling of this exceedingly simple life-form — but a working (or even partially failing) model would be a truly revolutionary step forward for our understanding of life.
Hermaphrodite c. elegans
A “win” in this case would mean generating nematode behavior simply by inputting detailed and accurate-enough information into detailed and accurate-enough models. A model called the NeuroML Connectome is being used to model every one of the 302 neurons and all of their interconnections, for instance, and a fluid modeler simulates the environment to surveys whole body movement. Many such systems are to be united under OpenWorm’s own system, the Geppetto life simulation engine.
This all takes a bottom-up approach, much like our attempts to understand protein folding, starting from the lowest level of organization and testing our understanding of that level by using it to predict or induce higher-level structures. Also like protein folding, this worm creation process will likely prove extremely difficult and time consuming, but the process of trying to is educational enough to justify the work.
That this work is open-source speaks to a growing awareness within science that crowdsourcing is both a powerful and entitled force. As with protein folding, the hope seems to be to give seemingly insurmountable problems to the world’s server farm, only this time they are looking to rent use of your mind, as well as your processor.

Visualizing the insane complexity of a half second of stock trading


Stock trading - 1/2 second
Johnson & Johnson is a longstanding company that has a blue chip stock traded on the NY Stock Exchange. The firm has a market capitalization of $239.70 billion, which means it’s a rather large entity even for a publicly traded company.
JNJ’s average trading volume is 9,694,550, which means that about 10 million of the company’s shares are traded per day. This doesn’t mean that its shares are traded 9.6M times per day but, even so, they get traded very frequently. This video is a visualization that shows just how many transactions can happen in just one half of a second. As you might has guessed, it’s a lot.
The video shows the trades happening each millisecond from 9:37:56:125 to 9:37:56:655 on Thursday May 2, 2013. That’s 530 milliseconds, or just over a half a second. During that time countless (well, not for computers) high-frequency trades were made, though some of those were probably what we consider to be conventional transactions, with deals as bland as employees cashing in their bonuses and people putting their money into a dividend-bearing stock so they could save for retirement.
Those entities on the circumference of the circle — BATS, PHIL, CBOE, and so on — are the exchange operators. BATS, for example, runs the BZX Exchange and the BYX Exchange and handles about one-tenth of all US trades each day. (You might have heard of it — the company got a lot of press in January for some high-profile technology problems.) When one exchange processes a trade it goes out to all the others. Each trade much be processed perfectly, otherwise there will be pricing inconsistencies which can be exploited for unfair gains.
To get an idea of just how intense the trading is, remember that this is just a single stock. There are many others out there, and while JNJ is a large company, there are others that are more actively traded. Even so, if you go to the end of the video you will see the flurry of madness slow down to a much more understandable trading volume.
The next time you read about high-frequency trading and how a few milliseconds can make a big difference when you are trading algorithmically, this video shows you why that’s the case. So much is happening so quickly that humans are uselessly for anything more than programming the computers and then sending them on their way, along with some instructions about what to do in a given scenario… and hopefully a few measures which will help avoid a global financial meltdown.

Fermi space telescope fires thrusters to avoid explosive collision



fermi_cosmos1805_02
Two satellites colliding in Earth’s orbit would potentially be disastrous. Not only because of the loss of the crafts, but also because of the lethal debris it would create that could damage or destroy other satellites circling the globe.
At the end of March last year NASA discovered that its Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope was on course to pass within 700 feet of the decommissioned Russian Cosmos 1805 satellite. 700 feet sounds like a lot, but NASA only works off position estimates and has been out by more than that in the past. It also didn’t help that only a week’s warning was given about the near pass.
As the days went by it became clearer that the two craft would be passing extremely close to each other. The most accurate estimate put Fermi and Cosmos 1805 at the exact same location within 30 milliseconds of each other. That’s too close for comfort, especially as Cosmos 1805 weighs 3,100 pounds and is travelling at 27,000mph relative to Fermi. It was calculated that a collision would destroy both craft and release energy the equivalent of 2.5 tons of high explosives. In other words, action needed to be taken to ensure they didn’t hit at any cost.
Fermi’s project scientist Julie McEnery decided to use the telescope’s thrusters, previously reserved for use only when Fermi is set to end its mission and leave orbit. Having never been tested, using them while Fermi’s mission was still in progress was a huge risk, but there was no choice. NASA fired the thrusters on April 3 for just one second and avoided the collision. They also ensured doing so would not put Fermi in danger of colliding with anything else.
earth_orbit_spacejunk
Such drama in space doesn’t happen very often, but it reminds us we do have a growing problem of potential collisions and the consequences they would bring. And saving Fermi was very important as it is performing an all-sky study using the on board Large Area Telescope (LAT). Since launching in 2008 it has discovered a pulsar in the CTA 1 supernova, observed the largest yet recorded energy release from the Carina constellation, discovered antimatter occurs naturally on Earth, found two massive gamma-ray and X-ray bubbles around the Milky Way, and observed the highest energy light ever seen from the Sun. Nice save, NASA

Fermi space telescope fires thrusters to avoid explosive collision


fermi_cosmos1805_02
Two satellites colliding in Earth’s orbit would potentially be disastrous. Not only because of the loss of the crafts, but also because of the lethal debris it would create that could damage or destroy other satellites circling the globe.
At the end of March last year NASA discovered that its Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope was on course to pass within 700 feet of the decommissioned Russian Cosmos 1805 satellite. 700 feet sounds like a lot, but NASA only works off position estimates and has been out by more than that in the past. It also didn’t help that only a week’s warning was given about the near pass.
As the days went by it became clearer that the two craft would be passing extremely close to each other. The most accurate estimate put Fermi and Cosmos 1805 at the exact same location within 30 milliseconds of each other. That’s too close for comfort, especially as Cosmos 1805 weighs 3,100 pounds and is travelling at 27,000mph relative to Fermi. It was calculated that a collision would destroy both craft and release energy the equivalent of 2.5 tons of high explosives. In other words, action needed to be taken to ensure they didn’t hit at any cost.
Fermi’s project scientist Julie McEnery decided to use the telescope’s thrusters, previously reserved for use only when Fermi is set to end its mission and leave orbit. Having never been tested, using them while Fermi’s mission was still in progress was a huge risk, but there was no choice. NASA fired the thrusters on April 3 for just one second and avoided the collision. They also ensured doing so would not put Fermi in danger of colliding with anything else.
earth_orbit_spacejunk
Such drama in space doesn’t happen very often, but it reminds us we do have a growing problem of potential collisions and the consequences they would bring. And saving Fermi was very important as it is performing an all-sky study using the on board Large Area Telescope (LAT). Since launching in 2008 it has discovered a pulsar in the CTA 1 supernova, observed the largest yet recorded energy release from the Carina constellation, discovered antimatter occurs naturally on Earth, found two massive gamma-ray and X-ray bubbles around the Milky Way, and observed the highest energy light ever seen from the Sun. Nice save, NASA

Camera developed that views the world just like an insect



insect_eye_camera_04
The eye of an insect and the view it has of the world is very different to human eyes see. Each insect eye is typically made up of hundreds or thousands of corneal lenses (lots of smaller eyes, basically), each of which captures a part of the overall view the insect has.
While I wouldn’t trade my sight for that of an insect, the design of such an eye does have uses in the development of new cameras. And a research team at the University of Illinois has managed to create a new camera that views the world just like an insect does.
insect_eye_camera_05
Each smaller eye, known as an ommatidium, an insect eye uses is made up of a corneal lens, crystalline cone, and a light sensitive organ. What the team at Illinois did was to create an artificial ommatidium out of rubbery optics that could be laid out as a mesh structure and stretched or deformed. Combining 180 of these microlenses in a hemispherical layout formed an artificial version of the eye found on a fire ant.
A camera that sees the world in this way is desirable because it offers up a 180 degree field of view with a near infinite depth of field and perfect focus in every part of the captured image. It can see much more than a typical single-lens digital camera, and therefore has uses in areas such as surveillance and medical science (endoscope cameras).
Creating such a camera required a number of advanced manufacturing techniques and materials that have been developed at the university over the past several years, as well as the supporting software that stitches the images the eye captures together.
insect_eye_camera_03
A successfully working artificial insect eye is only the beginning, though. The fire ant relies on 180 ommatidia, but other insects have significantly more. For example, a dragonfly uses 28,000 of them. So as the manufacturing of such an eye is perfected, we will no doubt see the number of microlenses increase and the quality of the output enhanced.

Camera developed that views the world just like an insect


insect_eye_camera_04
The eye of an insect and the view it has of the world is very different to human eyes see. Each insect eye is typically made up of hundreds or thousands of corneal lenses (lots of smaller eyes, basically), each of which captures a part of the overall view the insect has.
While I wouldn’t trade my sight for that of an insect, the design of such an eye does have uses in the development of new cameras. And a research team at the University of Illinois has managed to create a new camera that views the world just like an insect does.
insect_eye_camera_05
Each smaller eye, known as an ommatidium, an insect eye uses is made up of a corneal lens, crystalline cone, and a light sensitive organ. What the team at Illinois did was to create an artificial ommatidium out of rubbery optics that could be laid out as a mesh structure and stretched or deformed. Combining 180 of these microlenses in a hemispherical layout formed an artificial version of the eye found on a fire ant.
A camera that sees the world in this way is desirable because it offers up a 180 degree field of view with a near infinite depth of field and perfect focus in every part of the captured image. It can see much more than a typical single-lens digital camera, and therefore has uses in areas such as surveillance and medical science (endoscope cameras).
Creating such a camera required a number of advanced manufacturing techniques and materials that have been developed at the university over the past several years, as well as the supporting software that stitches the images the eye captures together.
insect_eye_camera_03
A successfully working artificial insect eye is only the beginning, though. The fire ant relies on 180 ommatidia, but other insects have significantly more. For example, a dragonfly uses 28,000 of them. So as the manufacturing of such an eye is perfected, we will no doubt see the number of microlenses increase and the quality of the output enhanced.

Watch ice needles pour out of a lake like Play-Doh through a grate


Ice needles
While our species’ explorative focus might’ve turned to space and the ocean, there are still some extremely impressive phenomena happening right where we live. We’ve seen snow and ice do some fairly cool (or terrifying) things, like this time-lapse video of a 2010 blizzard that hit New Jersey shows. A quick search on Google or YouTube, and you can find countless videos of people living in extremely cold climates tossing buckets of hot water into the air, only to have the water instantly turn to snow. Now, a video that is making the rounds shows what can be described as ice needles pouring out of a lake, each new needle clinking onto a pile of needles that came before it.
The video, taken at Medicine Lake in Plymouth, Minnesota, captures many long, thin fragments of ice pouring out from chunks of ice on the shore. There are so many little ice needles that it resembles something like Play-Doh being pushed through the grate of a child’s toy. The sheer amount of needles tumbling out of the ice in unison created something of an abrasive noise, as if many shards of glass were falling to the floor.
Reportedly, the phenomenon — known as “chandeliering” ice — happens when the temperature changes enough for the ice to begin melting, but rather than a full melt, thin slivers of ice break off of a main chunk until they eventually tumble down in a landslide-like fashion. There are a few reports of the phenomenon happening in the past, some of which created so many sharp ice slivers that they had to be cleaned away by front end loaders.

Over 20,000 people apply to go to Mars and never come back


Mars One
Reality shows are a dime a dozen. From documenting the fancy lives of semi-fancy people, to following the illegal moonshining misadventures of a toothless man named Jim Tom, there is a reality show out there for just about any interest nowadays. If you were really interested in a Mars-based reality show, though, you were unfortunately left without something to partially pay attention to while messing around on your tablet. Last year, a project was announced that would send civilians on a one-way trip to Mars — but it’d be filmed as a reality show. Dubbed Mars One, it turns out quite a bit of people are clamoring to be on the show, rather than rolling their eyes and smirking at blog posts covering the project in a serious manner.
The project recently opened up its application process, and it turns outmore than 20,000 people paid the $38 application fee in order to be a prospective candidate on the show-cum-historic-mission-that-will-forever-change-mankind.
If the project gets off the ground, the result of the show will be to send four people on a one-way trip to Mars. Unlike the ragtag team of drillers-by-day and astronauts-by-extinction-event in Armageddon, the potential Mars One candidates will have to train for around eight years in order to make the cut.
Snark aside, making Mars One a reality show in the age of reality television is most likely a decent idea. If it were just some obscure website claiming to transport people to Mars if you send in $38, it would most likely come off as either a scam or a serious project that no one takes seriously (probably the former). If you can create an emotional bond between a worldwide audience and the people involved in your project, you’ll stay in the public’s thoughts, which is much more helpful than being ignored or forgotten. To this effect, the Mars Onewebsite already has a simple ranking system in which regular people like us can rate our favorite applicant, and list them through a ranking filter.
The project plans to send people to Mars by 2023, so we all have a bit of time to get acquainted with those 20,000 (and counting) candidates.

Space rock leaves a bullet hole in the ISS solar array


ISS_bullethole_625
The International Space Station is a relatively large moving target floating around above the Earth. Not only can it be hit by man-made space junk, but there’s also a lot of space rock out there traveling at hull-damaging speeds.
Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut currently aboard the ISS has just been reminded of this fact when he looked out the window and saw a “bullet hole” in the station’s solar array. According to Hadfield’sTwitter account, he believes a “small stone from the universe” came into contact with the solar panel and smashed right through it leaving the bullet-sized hole you can see above.
Hadfield also commented that he’s glad the object missed the hull, and you can understand why. Such objects can be traveling in excess of 25,000 mph and would certainly cause some damage through a direct hit. However, a hull breach is very unlikely due to the way the hull is constructed from multiple layers. At best the astronauts inside would have their attention grabbed by the sound such an impact could make.
It’s unclear at the moment what the damage will do to the ISS’s energy generating capabilities. Is it a case the whole panel has stopped working, or just a small area around the hole? We’ll have to wait and see what NASA says after they’ve inevitably carried out some tests and checked the data.

Virgin Galactic successfully tests space plane for commercial flights


rocket
SpaceX seems to get all the private rocket buzz these days, but Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is also out there, firing off rockets and aiming for the heavens. The company’s SpaceShipTwo space plane just completed its first powered test flight, and the video footage is a sight to behold.
Rather than enter into some NASA contract to shoot supplies into space on a giant rocket with a totally boring unmanned robot spacecraft, Virgin is working toward the goal of taking people into space. Well, neither one is actually boring, and the Virgin flights aren’t exactly going to be in most people’s price range. When the trip is made available to consumers as early as late 2013, the estimated cost is going to be a steep $200,000. Clearly not within reach of the common man.
SpaceShipTwo is a suborbital vehicle that will be flown up above commercial air traffic by a larger plane. In the video this task is accomplished by WhiteKnightTwo, which reached an altitude of 46,000 feet before releasing the smaller rocket-powered space plane. The craft’s engine was then fired for 16 seconds, reaching a maximum speed of Mach 1.2. This pushed SpaceShipTwo up to 56,000 feet before it disengaged and returned to Earth.
The space plane was piloted by Mark Stucky and co-pilot Mike Alsbury, who don’t actually work for Virgin Galactic. Both pilots are with Scaled Composites, the firm which built SpaceShipTwo for Virgin. This test is the third unassisted flight of the ship, but only the first time the engine has been engaged in the air.
When real flights begin, the SpaceShipTwo will use its rocket engine to take travelers to the edge of space, where they will make a full orbit of Earth and get to experience weightlessness. This could best be described as extremely low Earth orbit — substantially below even the orbit of the International Space Station. Although, wealthy folks are probably still going to line up at the airlock once the service goes live.

Students devise a way to make great coffee in space


coffee_in_space
Getting food and drink into space comes with a number of compromises. Everything has to be lightweight and have a very long shelf life while remaining edible for the astronauts. One area where the experience doesn’t come anywhere close to what we get on Earth is coffee.
Everyone likes their coffee a particular way. Black coffee is easy, but start adding milk and sugar, and you have a problem in space. That problem stems from the fact everything is premixed and freeze dried, so astronauts don’t get to choose how sugary or milky their coffee is, and this has always been a big complaint of those returning from a mission.
Bad coffee in space is a problem of the past, though, as a group of students at Rice University have solved it using a couple of pouches and a 3D printed roller. The system is explained in the video below:
The main difference with this and what has gone before is the fact astronauts get to mix the coffee, creamer, and sugar the way they like it (the roller system can accurately dispense sugar or creamer in 10ml shots). And this is done while staying within the existing restrictions of no liquid leaks and everything remaining lightweight. Sure, it’s going to take a few minutes longer to make the beverage, but if there’s a great cup of coffee at the end of the process it’s worth it and astronauts won’t mind doing it.
Creating this new coffee making system was made possible by the Texas Space Grant Consortium, which runs the TSGC Design Challenge. One of the challenges this year was making coffee better on the International Space Station. The Rice University engineering student team of Robert Johnson, Colin Shaw and Benjamin Young took on the challenge, and are hopeful their solution now makes it on board the ISS.

Stunning images of Red Rose of Saturn, a hurricane twice the size of Earth


Red Rose of Saturn
Weather on alien planets is always fascinating. Perhaps the most famous extraterrestrial weather system is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot — otherwise known as that huge blotch in the planet’s southern hemisphere — which is storm that is estimated to have a total lifetime of around 180 to 350 years. Jupiter isn’t the only planet with a cool, persistent storm, though. NASA’s venerable Saturn probe, Cassini, has been observing the ringed planet since 2004, and has seen some incredible things. A new video released by NASA, though, is possibly the most beautiful observation Cassini has made so far.
A mysterious hexagon appeared at Saturn’s north pole, but the Cassini imaging team was not able to see what was at the center of it due to obstruction from the winter season. However, the planet changed from winter to spring, and what was at the center of the hexagon became clear: a hurricane larger than two Earths.
The winds of the Saturn hurricane are raging at over 300mph. For comparison, an Earth storm is classified as a hurricane once it reaches a sustained wind speed of 74mph. Whereas an Earth hurricane travels around and requires an ocean to be underneath itself in order to form, this Saturnian hurricane is locked to the north pole, and doesn’t have an ocean under it. NASA scientists don’t yet know why the hurricane didn’t need an ocean to form.
The eye of the storm is a gargantuan 1,250 miles wide.
The storm is referred to as the Red Rose of Saturn, not because the actual clouds are red, but because the color pictures provided by NASA have been enhanced to show the height differential between the storm’s clouds. The red clouds are lower, while the surrounding green clous are higher. So, it somewhat resembles a red rose surrounded by green foliage.
Cassini continues to gather stunning footage from Saturn, and recently the mission was extended until 2017, so there will sure to be more gorgeous footage to come.

Volvo uses KERS to cut car fuel consumption by 25 percent


KERS Test Setup
If you’re a fan of Formula One racing, then you’ll be used to hearing the term KERS. It stands for Kinetic Energy Recovery System, and it allows the recovery of energy under braking, which is then stored and used at a later time.
In Formula One, KERS is used to increase the speed of the cars for short periods of time, and typically allows them to go between 10-13mph faster in short bursts. But the same system can be used to help improve the economy of modern road vehicles, too.
The problem with KERS systems in the past is they were very heavy due to the fact they were made out of steel, but Volvo has developed a new Flywheel KERS system that is manufactured using the much lighter carbon fiber. Another advantage of using carbon fiber is that the flywheel can rotate faster, in this case up to 60,000 rpm, allowing for much higher energy storage.
What Volvo intends to do is fit their KERS system to the rear axle of their cars. When driving along and the brakes are applied, energy is stored in the flywheel and the car’s engine is turned off. Then, when the driver pushes the accelerator pedal again, instead of the engine turning back on immediately the energy stored in the flywheel is used first and applied to the back wheels.
Such a system not only ups the fuel efficiency of the car, which according to Volvo is up to 25 percent better, it also improves the performance of the car in terms of how fast it can accelerate–a boost of up to 80 horsepower. Volvo also says the Flywheel KERS system is best suited to traveling in city traffic where you typically accelerate and then brake repeatedly.
Flywheel KERS
The final Flywheel KERS system Volvo has designed measures just 20cm across and weighs 6kg. The flywheel spins in a vacuum so as to minimize friction and therefore increase the amount of energy it can store. Volvo plans to include it alongside a four-cylinder turbo engine, but there’s no details yet of when we can see it appearing on a production car.