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NASA

Submission + - NASA Readies Discovery Shuttle For Final Flight (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
gabbo529
gabbo529 writes: "After 38 trips, 352 days in orbit and more than 5,600 trips around the Earth, the space shuttle Discovery is preparing for its final launch this week. Since its creation, it has flown to orbit more than any other craft. It has set a number of precedents including first craft to feature a female shuttle pilot and female shuttle commander (Eileen Collins), the first African American spacewalker (Bernard Harris) and the first sitting member of congress to fly in space (Jake Garn).

In its final foray into space, the Discovery will set another precedent when it flies the first humanoid robot to fly in space, Robonaut2."
Earth

Submission + - NASA finds family of habitable planets (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: NASA's star-gazing space telescope continues to find amazing proof that there are tons of habitable planets in space and we have only scratched the surface of what's out there. The space agency said today its Kepler space telescope spotted what it called its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in what it considers to be the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system.
NASA

House Passes NASA Authorization Bill 149

Posted by CmdrTaco from the please-sir-can-i-have-some-more dept.
simonbp writes "The US House of Representatives has just passed the Senate version of the FY2011 NASA Authorization Act. This bill is a compromise between Obama's proposed budget and earlier House bills. It cancels Ares I in favor of commercially-operated crew transportation to ISS, adds technology development funds, and keeps a version of Orion and a new heavy-lift 'Space Launch System' to both be operational by 2016. The timing of this bill was crucial to keeping key NASA personnel and contractors from being laid off."
Cloud

Yale Researchers Prove That ACID Is Scalable 272

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-could-prove-lunch dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The has been a lot of buzz in the industry lately about NoSQL databases helping Twitter, Amazon, and Digg scale their transactional workloads. But there has been some recent pushback from database luminaries such as Michael Stonebraker. Now, a couple of researchers at Yale University claim that NoSQL is no longer necessary now that they have scaled traditional ACID compliant database systems."
Australia

Australia Considering iPhone App Censorship 284

Posted by samzenpus from the no-apps-mate dept.
srjh writes "Having raised concerns about 'the classification of games playable on mobile telephones,' the Australian government has now 'put the wheels in motion to address this.' Under current Australian legislation, video games sold in the country must pay between $470 and $2040 to have the game classified, and due to the lack of an 18+ rating in Australia, if it is not found to be suitable for a 15-year-old, it is banned outright. This is the fate met by several recent titles, such as Left 4 Dead 2 and Fallout 3. Over 200,000 applications are available for the iPhone, many of them games, and developers have raised concerns about the prohibitive costs involved, with many announcing an intention to drop the Australian market altogether if the plan proceeds."

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