Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/192798723?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Monday, January 30, 2012
Space station dodges Chinese satellite debris
The International Space Station fired its thrusters Saturday in order to steer clear of orbital debris from China's 2007 anti-satellite test.
The dodging maneuver was required to avoid space junk from the Chinese satellite Fengyun 1C, which peppered low-Earth orbit with an estimated 3,000 pieces of shrapnel when it was intentionally destroyed by China five years ago. The remaining debris has required several similar avoidance maneuvers by the space station in recent years.
Rocket thrusters on the space station's Russian-built Zvezda service module fired at 6:50 p.m. EST (2350 GMT) in a 1-minute, four-second burn to slightly raise the laboratory's orbit, leaving it on a path that reaches just over 251 miles above Earth at the highest point, NASA officials said in an update.
Saturday's maneuver was "designed to place the station at the correct altitude and trajectory for future visiting vehicle activities and to avoid a repetitive coincidence of possible conjunctions with a piece of Chinese Fengyun 1C satellite debris," NASA officials explained.
A conjunction is what scientists call instances in which space debris will fly close enough to the station to cause concern. Since the space station orbits Earth at about 17,500 mph even a small piece of orbital debris can cause serious damage if it hits. [ Photos: Space Debris & Cleanup Concepts ]
The Fengyun 1C satellite debris had the potential to cause seven conjunctions with the space station, so steering the $100 billion safely into the clear was required, according to an earlier NASA update.
The space station is currently home to a six-man crew that includes three Russians, two Americans and one Dutch astronaut. NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston typically orders a dodging maneuver when debris is expected to fly inside a safety perimeter, which is shaped like a pizza box, that extends about 15 miles around the space station, as well as a half-mile above and below the orbiting lab.
When there is not enough time to plan a dodging maneuver, station astronauts can take shelter inside the Russian Soyuz vehicles that ferry them to and from the station until a piece of space junk has safely zoomed by. The Soyuz capsules, two of which are docked at the station now, each seat three people and can double as lifeboats.
Maneuvers to avoid space junk conjunctions are not uncommon for the space station and other satellites orbiting Earth.? Earlier this month, the space station fired its thrusters to avoid debris from a 2009 satellite crash between an U.S. and Russian spacecraft.
Space junk poses an ongoing threat to astronauts on the space station , as well as other satellites in orbit. To date, there are about 6,000 tons of space junk orbiting Earth ranging from tiny bolts and paint chips to huge spent rocket stages and dead satellites.
More than 500,000 pieces of space junk are currently tracked every day by NASA and the U.S. military's Space Surveillance Network in order to avoid collisions in orbit.
You can follow Tariq Malik on Twitter @tariqjmalik. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
? 2012 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46182311/ns/technology_and_science-space/
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Sunday, January 29, 2012
Ubuntu moves beyond the desktop with new TV interface, menu-killing navigation system (Digital Trends)
Much debate has followed Ubunto?s mobile strategy, the general consensus being that its loyal followers and fans of Linux everywhere are the least interested in testing this technology. Still, doubt over how well it would compete against that other open source, Linux-based option (a little something called Android) remains.
Since the announcement, Ubuntu has been relatively quiet about its mobile and smart device progress, until very recently.
Ubuntu TV: Coming soon? maybe
At CES earlier this month, Canonical introduced the Ubuntu smart TV interface. ?Ubuntu TV is a vision of how TV will work in the future. With no cables, no boxes and no hassles, the goal is to uncomplicated television for the average viewer while delivering to him or her all the services and options that they are becoming used to,? the company said. The system allows you not only to watch broadcast or streaming content, but also to access your own media files as well, via the cloud. It?s built into your TV, not available from a box-top or separate device. Also, there is no browser option, something Ubuntu doesn?t believe belongs in the television. 
Working in its favor is the fact that Ubuntu wants nothing more than to be the operating system for your TV. It has no plans to get into content production (like Google has done with YouTube), or develop its own app or other content distribution platform (which comes tied to Apple products). Ubuntu?s service steps on fewer toes than some of its major competitors do.
?From a cost perspective as well as a ?make the life of the manufacturer? easy perspective, Ubuntu will be a solid contender,? Ubuntu expert and author of Ubuntu Unleashed?2012 Edition: Covering 11.10 and 12.04 (7th edition)?Matthew Helmke tells us. ?Companies like Vizio, that make smart TVs with pretty cool software and interfaces, could be able to offload some of their development expenses and in-house programming burden.?
Still, Ubuntu TV, for the moment, largely remains conceptual. There isn?t so much of a hint as to a shipping date, and if there are any manufacturing partners, both parties are keeping quiet about it. But in true Ubuntu form, there are instructions on how you can make your own Ubuntu-supported smart TV.
New interface design
While the announcement of Ubuntu TV definitely has a certain flash appeal to it, a new display interface deserves just as much attention. Canonical?s Mark Shuttleworth recently blogged about the change, called the Head-up Display (or HUD) that does away with the menu and tries to better reflect how the human brain works.?We noticed that [new as well as established] users spent a lot of time, relatively speaking, navigating the menus of their applications, either to learn about the capabilities of the app, or to take a specific action,? he says. ?We were also conscious of the broader theme in Unity design of leading from user intent. And that set us on a course which lead to today?s first public milestone on what we expect will be a long, fruitful and exciting journey.?
In order to execute commands, the HUD interface eliminates the need to scroll through menus, instead giving users immediate control over the applications they are using. Watch the video demo below to get a look at HUD in action.
Now HUD is definitely meant for the desktop in many respects ? Shuttleworth specifically mentions that, saying, ?The desktop remains central to our everyday work and play, despite all the excitement around tablets, TVs and phones.? However, there?s great potential for how this fast and accessible system could translate to Ubuntu for mobile devices. Helmke agrees: ?I think HUD will be wonderful on mobile. It is faster than using menus, which are terrible for mobile devices anyway.?
And the innovation that Ubuntu has planned for mobile will interact seamlessly with this new approach. ?Once the promised voice interface is completely, HUD will be hard to beat.?
This article was originally posted on Digital Trends
More from Digital Trends
Ubuntu?s going mobile: Will it survive?
MeeGo killed in favor of Tizen, a new OS backed by Samsung and Intel
Microsoft previews Windows 8 at BUILD
Television and social integration: What exactly do consumers want?
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Kitchen gadget inspires scientist to make more effective plastic electronics
ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2012) ? One day in 2010, Rutgers physicist Vitaly Podzorov watched a store employee showcase a kitchen gadget that vacuum-seals food in plastic. The demo stuck with him. The simple concept -- an airtight seal around pieces of food -- just might apply to his research: developing flexible electronics using lightweight organic semiconductors for products such as video displays or solar cells.
"Organic transistors, which switch or amplify electronic signals, hold promise for making video displays that bend like book pages or roll and unroll like posters," said Podzorov. But traditional methods of fabricating a part of the transistor known as the gate insulator often end up damaging the transistor's delicate semiconductor crystals.
Drawing inspiration from the food-storage gadget, Podzorov and his colleagues tried an experiment. They suspended a thin polymer membrane above the organic crystal and created a vacuum underneath, causing the membrane to collapse gently and evenly onto the crystal's surface. The result: a smooth, defect-free interface between the organic semiconductor and the gate insulator.
The researchers reported their success in the journal Advanced Materials. In the article,Podzorov and three colleagues describe how a single-crystal organic field effect transistor (OFET) made with this thin polymer gate insulator boosted electrical performance. The researchers further reported that they could remove and reapply membranes to the same crystal several times without degrading its surface.
Organic transistors electrically resemble silicon transistors in computer chips, but they are made of flexible carbon-based molecules that can be printed on sheets of plastic. Silicon transistors are made in rigid, brittle wafers of silicon.
The methods that scientists previously applied to organic transistor fabrication were based on silicon semiconductor processing, explained Podzorov, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, School of Arts and Sciences. These involved high temperatures, high-energy plasmas or chemical reactions, all of which could damage the delicate organic crystal surface and hinder the transistor's performance.
"People have tendencies to go with something they've known for a long time," he said. "In this case, it doesn't work right."
Podzorov's innovation builds upon a decade of Rutgers research in this field, including his invention of the first single crystal organic transistor in 2003. While his latest innovation is still a ways from commercial reality, he sees an immediate application in the classroom.
"Our technique takes 10 minutes," he said. "It should be exciting for students to actually build these devices and immediately see them work, all within one lab session."
Podzorov was actually trying to solve another problem when he first recalled the food packaging demo. He was thinking about how to protect organic crystals from airborne impurities when his lab shipped samples to collaborating scientists in California and overseas.
"We could place our samples between plastic sheets and pull a vacuum," he said. "Then I thought, 'why don't we try doing this for our gate insulator?'"
Funding for the research was provided by the U. S. Department of Energy and the Rutgers Institute for Advanced Materials and Devices for Nanotechnology. Collaborators in Podzorov's lab were postdoctoral researchers Hee Taek Yi and Yuanzhen Chen, and undergraduate student Krzysztof Czelen. The department's machine shop made a custom-designed vacuum chamber for the project.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Rutgers University.
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Journal Reference:
- H. T. Yi, Y. Chen, K. Czelen, V. Podzorov. Vacuum Lamination Approach to Fabrication of High-Performance Single-Crystal Organic Field-Effect Transistors. Advanced Materials, 2011; 23 (48): 5807 DOI: 10.1002/adma.201103305
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120127140935.htm
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Saturday, January 28, 2012
All You Need to Know about Investing That Will Assist You Grow ...
When you are looking to enter into the world of making investment, you may need to think about some points and carefully go over them. Among them is the sum of money you?re ready to invest. If you put your dollars on bonds, mutual funds, options, or stocks, you will need to have a certain amount so as to acquire a unit or build an account.
With regards to financial investments, two forms of units are commonly traded out there ? short-term as well as long-term investments.
The primary difference between the two is this: short-term investments are made to provide considerable returns in a relatively shorter period of time, whereas long-term investments are meant to reach maturity for many years or so and characterized by a slow but progressive increase in return.
If your primary objective as an investor is to boost your wealth or keep the purchasing power of your capital over time, then it?s essential that your investments must grow in value that at least keeps up with inflation rate. Having a diversed portfolio of equity shares and property investments is arguably a good long-term strategy when compared with having only fixed interest investments.
You must have an investment portfolio that is spread spanning different varieties of investment instruments so you can successfully decrease your risk. It is a classic the actual application of the old phrase ?Do not put all your eggs in just one basket.? The many investment products available these days are becoming more and more complex with huge and institutional investors increasingly try to outdo one another.
When you are an individual investor, you just need to invest on something you?re comfortable with and not to products that you do not comprehend. You have to be clear with your investment criteria since it is essential in evaluating your options. When you?re doubtful, the right course of action is to obtain helpful advice.
View this site and know more about investments for more suggestions about growing your money.
This entry was posted on Friday, January 27th, 2012 at 4:50 pm by Fidel Forkey and is filed under Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
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Liberalism spreading among college freshmen, survey finds
Already inclined toward liberalism, college freshmen are leaning even farther left on key political issues, a nationwide survey of first-year students has found.
An all-time high of 71.3 percent of the new students support same-sex marriage, 6.4 percentage points higher than in 2009, according to the annual survey of more than 200,000 freshmen conducted by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute.
Nearly 43 percent of conservative freshmen said gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry.
Opinions on abortion, marijuana legalization, immigration and affirmative action also grew more liberal in 2011, according to data released Wednesday. The 270-school survey -- the country's largest sampling of college students -- was first used in 1966.
"It's not so much that liberal students are becoming more liberal," said Linda DeAngelo, one of the report's authors. "It's that students who describe themselves as conservative are becoming more progressive."
A little more than 22 percent of respondents described themselves as conservative or "far right." About 30 percent said they were liberal or "far left," while 47.4 percent called themselves "middle of the road."
Despite the apparent liberalization, political advocates hoping to recruit students to their causes need to realize the survey is more reflective of young people's tolerance on social issues, not enthusiasm, said Ange-Marie Hancock, a political-science professor at the
University of Southern California."They're not like ATMs, where you can just withdraw their support," she said. "You have to cultivate them as voters."
Conservative students in the Bay Area said they weren't surprised by the shift to the left. In a region that gave birth to California's gay-marriage push, political views are not always black and white, students said.
"My time is spent more on fiscal issues," said Mark Luluan, a 24-year-old Cal State East Bay graduate student and chairman of the campus College Republicans chapter. "Over the past four years, we haven't really dealt with traditional socially conservative issues. Students are more concerned about getting a job after graduation."
The same is true among San Jose State University conservatives, said 19-year-old sophomore Mark Williams, chairman of that school's College Republicans.
"I think the conservatives in our club are not as focused on social issues," he said. "We're not really for or against" same-sex marriage.
At UC Berkeley, where liberal politics have long been the cultural norm, several students said Wednesday they rarely discuss politics with their peers and they rarely come across students who are outwardly conservative.
But being conservative would not earn a Cal student a scarlet letter, said 18-year-old freshman Alex Mangels.
"I don't think being conservative would be a huge problem," said Mangels, a Lafayette native who said he did not yet know how to describe his political beliefs. "They're not going to hate you for it."
The survey also revealed that alcohol consumption dropped to an all-time low in 2011, with 35.4 percent saying they drank beer as high-school seniors.
Just less than 58 percent of respondents said they were attending their first-choice college -- the lowest number since 1974 -- and more high-school students took advanced-placement courses and studied longer than in the past.
"I think high-school students are stressed about getting into college," said DeAngelo, of UCLA. "There's an increased pressure to perform."
Matt Krupnick covers higher education. Contact him at 510-208-6488. Follow him at Twitter.com/MattKrupnick.
Source: http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_19822850?source=rss
Friday, January 27, 2012
GelaSkins launches hard cases for iPhone 4S, iPhone 3GS
GelaSkins has been quietly selling some funky iPhone skins for a few years now, but they've recently made the big jump to hard cases.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/btMOgTNYo4A/story01.htm
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