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Science

Submission + - Heat waves really are from global warming (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
mdsolar
mdsolar writes: ""The percentage of the earth’s land surface covered by extreme heat in the summer has soared in recent decades, from less than 1 percent in the years before 1980 to as much as 13 percent in recent years, according to a new scientific paper. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/07/30/1205276109.abstract

The change is so drastic, the paper says, that scientists can claim with near certainty that events like the Texas heat wave last year, the Russian heat wave of 2010 and the European heat wave of 2003 would not have happened without the planetary warming caused by the human release of greenhouse gases.

Those claims, which go beyond the established scientific consensus about the role of climate change in causing weather extremes, were advanced by James E. Hansen, a prominent NASA climate scientist, and two co-authors in a scientific paper published online on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.""
Mars

Submission + - Curiosity lands with implications far beyond a single mission (tech-stew.com)

Submitted by
techfun89
techfun89 writes: "Eight years in planning and eight months in travel, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory landed safely on Mars, resulting in cheers from the NASA team and showing once again the true grit of American ingenuity and determination.

NASA chief Charles Bolden calls this successful landing a significant step towards the Obama administration's vision of sending astronauts to Mars by the 2030s. Bolden stated: "The wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars."

The Curiosity landing has shown that we are capable of achieving missions that are seemingly difficult if not impossible, giving the critics of space exploration a shining example of what we can accomplish if given the chance. This mission is only the tip of the iceberg, as there will be much science to come from this mission, science that will unlock some of Mars' past (warmer and wetter) secrets but potentially shifting our understanding of our place in the cosmos on this pale blue dot that we call home. Work done here will pave the way for humans to Mars and beyond."
Apple

Submission + - Wozniak Predicts Horrible Problems with the Cloud 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: ""I think it's going to be horrendous," said Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak when asked about the shift away from hard disks towards uploading data into the cloud in a post-performance dialogue with audience members after a performance in Washington of "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," monologist Mike Daisey's controversial two-hour expose of Apple's labor conditions in China. "I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years." The engineering wizard behind the progenitor of today's personal computer, the Apple II, expanded on what really worried him about the cloud. "With the cloud, you don't own anything. You already signed it away" through the legalistic terms of service with a cloud provider that computer users must agree to. I want to feel that I own things," Wozniak said. "A lot of people feel, 'Oh, everything is really on my computer,' but I say the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we're going to have control over it.""

Comment Free Return trajectory (Score 5, Informative) 258

by thomas.kane (#40894589) Attached to: Did an Unnamed MIT Student Save Apollo 13?
Every Apollo mission up to 13 that went to the moon was already on a trajectory to return it to Earth via slingshot if there was an issue (i.e. SPS engine failed to fire for LOI). Shortly after TLI for Apollo 13, a burn was made to take Apollo 13 off this trajectory in order to reach Frau Mora (their landing site) at a specific time of the lunar cycle to provide good visibility for landing. The Apollo 13 loop around decision was very probably already on the books prior to the flight for just such an eventuality, and while any number of engineers (or hippies) could have initially developed such a burn, it is the flight director's (in this case Gene Kranz and others) who would ultimately review the procedure and make the final decision to perform the burn to return them to their free-return trajectory. To say that an MIT student "saved" Apollo 13 doesn't meet with the facts of the mission.
Privacy

Submission + - Stealthy Wi-Fi Spy Sees You Through Walls Thanks to Your Wireless Router (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: Researchers in London have devised a stealthy system that gives off no radio waves so it can't be detected, but by sniffing Wi-Fi signals, it can pinpoint a person's movement inside a building. University College London scientists Karl Woodbridge and Kevin Chetty developed this suitcase-sized prototype that has successfully been tested through a one-foot-thick brick wall to determine "a person's location, speed and direction." PhysOrg added, "See Through The Wall (STTW) technologies are of great interest to law enforcement and military agencies; this particular device has the UK Military of Defense exploring whether it might be used in 'urban warfare,' for scanning buildings. Other more benign applications might range from monitoring children to monitoring the elderly."

"Fundamentally, this is a radar system — you're just using radio waves that have been emitted by an external WiFi router, rather than creating your own," explained ExtremeTech. "Compare this with MIT's through-the-wall (TTW) radar, which is 8 feet (2.4m) across and requires a large power source to generate lots and lots of microwaves."

If you think the answer would be to hold perfectly still in order to avoid detection, to trick it into thinking you are nothing more than a piece of furniture, think again. As Engadget previously pointed out, engineers at the University of Utah developed a wireless network capable of seeing through walls to detect and monitor breathing patterns. In this case, it's not meant to be a surveillance system, but an inexpensive way to monitor patients' breathing.
United Kingdom

Submission + - Amazon Kindle Book Sales Surpass Print In UK (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
twoheadedboy
twoheadedboy writes: "Book lovers are increasingly turning to e-books, and in the UK Amazon has announced it now sells more e-books than physical copies on Amazon.co.uk. Kindle books surpassed sales of hardbacks in the UK back in May 2011 at a rate of two to one and now they have leapfrogged the combined totals of both hardbacks and paperbacks. The same happened in the US not so long ago, largely thanks to the popularity of novels like EL James' Fifty Shades of Grey, which started out as an e-book before being released in paperback."
ISS

Submission + - First commercial spacecraft to dock with ISS returns safety to Earth (spaceflightnow.com)

Submitted by thomas.kane
thomas.kane writes: SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft has successfully reentered and is now safely in the waters of the Pacific Ocean after more than 9 days in space. The Dragon capsule became the first commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station on May 25 and SpaceX is contracted by NASA for at least 12 more flights in the coming months bringing supplies to the space station and returning science done on board back to Earth.
Moon

Submission + - Lunar rocks pose puzzle for theory of Moon's origin (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: A chemical analysis of lunar rocks may force scientists to revise a leading theory for the Moon's formation: that the satellite was born when a Mars-sized body smacked into the infant Earth some 4.5 billion years ago. If that were the case, the Moon ought to bear the chemical signature of both Earth and its proposed 'second' parent. But a new study (abstract) suggests that the Moon’s isotopic composition reflects only Earth's contribution.
Mars

Submission + - Base on the Moon by 2020 (spaceflightnow.com)

Submitted by thomas.kane
thomas.kane writes: Newt Gingrich announced yesterday, while visiting Florida's Space Coast, a visionary plan for the future of space travel. He suggested a combination of the current private incentives and a government funded section, developing a moon base, commercial near earth orbit, and continuous propulsion systems to better reach Mars.

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