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Government

FAA Adds a Study On Adding Drones To Commercial Aviation 215

Posted by timothy from the did-you-pack-this-drone-yourself dept.
coondoggie writes "Facing a number of technical challenges, the Federal Aviation Administration said today it added another research project designed to better understand how unmanned aircraft can be brought safely into the national airspace. The FAA set a two-year research and development agreement with Insitu (an independent subsidiary of Boeing) and the New Jersey Air National Guard that will help FAA scientists to study and better understand unmanned aircraft design, construction, and features. Researchers will also look at the differences in how an air traffic controller would manage an unmanned aircraft vs. a manned aircraft."
NASA

Voyager 2 Speaking In Tongues 260

Posted by kdawson from the now-voyager dept.
dangle sends in an update from the borderland of Sol. "Voyager 2's flight data system, which formats information before beaming it back to Earth, has experienced a hiccup that has altered the pattern in which it sends updates home, preventing mission managers from decoding the science data beamed to Earth from Voyager 2. The spacecraft, which is currently 8.6 billion miles (13.8 billion km) from Earth, is apparently still in overall good health, according to the latest engineering data received on May 1. 'Voyager 2's initial mission was a four-year journey to Saturn, but it is still returning data 33 years later,' said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. 'It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus and Neptune, planets we had never seen close-up before. We will know soon what it will take for it to continue its epic journey of discovery.' The space probe and its twin Voyager 1 are flying through the bubble-like heliosphere, created by the sun, which surrounds our solar system."
Networking

Ubisoft DRM Causing More Problems 279

Posted by Soulskill from the there's-a-lesson-here-that-nobody-will-learn dept.
Joe Helfrich writes "Ubisoft's Settlers 7 servers have been causing problems for over a week for users worldwide, and Australian gamers are hardly able to connect at all. 'The problem reportedly strikes after the game has already confirmed an active Internet connection, and prevents the user from playing even the single-player campaign, returning the error "server not available." But they are available, because other people are logged into them and merrily playing away.' Wonder how they're going to describe this one as an attack."
Image

Subversive Groups Must Now Register In South Carolina 849

Posted by samzenpus from the are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been-a-member-of-the-communist-party dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Raw Story reports that terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina's Secretary of State and declare their intentions — or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison. The 'Subversive Activities Registration Act' passed last year in South Carolina and now officially on the books states that 'every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States ... shall register with the Secretary of State.'"
Education

Students Failing Because of Poor Grammar 1343

Posted by timothy from the end-thats-inn-kanada dept.
innocent_white_lamb writes "30% of freshman university students fail a 'simple English test' at Waterloo University (up from 25% a few years ago. Academic papers are riddled with 'cuz' (in place of 'because') and even include little emoticon faces. One professor says that students 'think commas are sort of like parmesan cheese that you sprinkle on your words.' At Simon Fraser University, 10% of students are not qualified to take the mandatory writing courses."

Comment Re:Really? (Score 2, Informative) 1324

by R_Kulio (#30941120) Attached to: US Grants Home Schooling German Family Political Asylum

I was homeschooled up until the middle of high school. At that point we had a discussion about my future educational goals and I decided that going to University was what I wanted to do. Although it was apparently possible to just take the SATs and go based on those scores I thought it would be easier to get a high school diploma. So I got the local high school to look through my homeschooling work I had done. Some was deemed equivalent and I got credit for it. Some was close enough, so I just had to take the final exam for the course to get credit. I did take some courses in school because I hadn't completed everything at home, but in most of those courses I was ahead of the rest of the class. I graduated on the honour's list, and got accepted to several universities. I have now graduated from university and am making it in the real world just fine.

Social skills don't have to be learned in school. I was part of several other organizations (cadets, scouts, youth group), where I learned how to interact with other people. Not just other people of my own age group either like I would if I only learned these skills in school.
Transportation

The Year of the E-Bicycle 494

Posted by kdawson from the daisy-daisy dept.
theodp writes "Electric bicycles have been around for more than a century, but they have never quite captured the imagination of auto-obsessed Americans. That may be about to change. At CES this month, Sanyo showed off its sleek, lightweight Eneloop Hybrid Bicycle. Priced at $2,300, the e-bike sports a black lithium-ion battery strapped to the frame beneath the seat. Press a button on the left handlebar, and a 250-watt motor kicks in, providing about twice as much power as your own pedaling. Some basic e-bike models, like the Ezip Trailz can be had for as low as $500. Both Trek and Schwinn began selling e-bikes last year, and Best Buy is offering e-bikes in three test markets: Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland, OR."
Science

Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132

Posted by Soulskill from the four-out-of-five-ain't-bad dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"
Image

Become Your Own Heir After Being Frozen 375

Posted by samzenpus from the what-could-go-wrong dept.
destinyland writes "A science writer discovered it's possible to finance your cryogenic preservation using life insurance — and then leave a huge death benefit to your future thawed self. From the article, 'Most in the middle class, if they seriously want it, can afford it now. So by taking the right steps, you can look forward to waking up one bright future morning from cryopreservation the proud owner of a bank account brimming with money!' There's one important caveat: some insist that money 'will have no meaning in a future dominated by advanced molecular manufacturing or other engines of mega-abundance.'"

Comment Its really dependent on the Child (Score 1) 1345

by R_Kulio (#29313993) Attached to: Schooling, Homeschooling, and Now, "Unschooling"
I attended elementary school, was homeschooled for a few years, was unschooled for a few years, attended high school for a few years (because Canadian Universities wouldn't accept only SAT scores, my understanding is US Colleges would), and graduated with a Bachelors in Software Engineering. I think the amount of learning in any environment is really dependent on the child. I learned just as much when formally homeschooling as when my parents were taking a complete hands off approach, because I still read math and science textbooks for fun. But I had siblings that definitely needed structure (either school or formal homeschooling).
NASA

NASA Probe Blasts 461 Gigabytes of Moon Data Daily 203

Posted by CmdrTaco from the thats-a-lotta-bits dept.
coondoggie writes "On its current space scouting mission, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is using a pumped up communications device to deliver 461 gigabytes of data and images per day, at a rate of up to 100 Mbps. As the first high data rate K-band transmitter to fly on a NASA spacecraft, the 13-inch-long tube, called a Traveling Wave Tube Amplifier, is making it possible for NASA scientists to receive massive amounts of images and data about the moon's surface and environment. The amplifier was built by L-3 Communications Electron Technologies in conjunction with NASA's Glenn Research Center. The device uses electrodes in a vacuum tube to amplify microwave signals to high power. It's ideal for sending large amounts of data over a long distance because it provides more power and more efficiency than its alternative, the transistor amplifier, NASA stated." It kills me that the moon has better bandwidth than my house.

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