#How Technology Will Make Everyone A Great Photographer At the end of May the Chicago Sun-Times laid off all its staff photographers.
The paper would instead use newswires freelancers and reporters armed with iphones. It was not the first time traditional media turned to untrained photojournalists consider the Instagram photos NBC published after the Boston Marathon bombing
#As one might expect the Sun-Times decision has met with criticism. It s been called â##shortsightedâ
#and â##idiotic. â#There s even a Tumblr of head-to-head comparisons between the Sun-Times
And in theory it will give the Sun-Times even more reach by leveraging the cameras already in place at news events.#
And the newer 20.3-megapixel Galaxy NX has an interchangeable lens mount. The Sony QX100 the newest offering in the lot is the most extreme example.
The Sun-Times to benefit from that type of machine vision the software will need to process larger image batches from multiple sources.
In time those pieces may come together proving that the Sun-Times decision wasn t foolish it was just a bit before its time.#
#One In Five Sun-Like Stars Have Earthlike Planets Back in February a team at Harvard announced they had found a possible Earthlike planet just 13 lightyears away.
The#study detailed the prevalence of these planets orbiting red dwarf stars and found#that about 15 percent have Earth-size planets within habitable zones.
However if you're stargazing from your backyard with only your eyes to guide you you wouldn't be able to see these cooler smaller stars.#
#Red dwarfs#are one-third the size and one-thousandth as bright as the sun. But in this week's PNAS Online Early Edition a team of researchers from#University of California at#Berkeley released a study that looks at how common Earth-size planets
are around stars that are more like our sun. The study found that for stars that more closely resemble our sun about 22 percent
or about one in five stars have these Earth-size planets within the habitable zone. The habitable zone includes orbits where planets receive the same amount of stellar energy from a star as the Earth receives from the sun. Earth-size planets include those that are between one and two times the size of Earth.
Perhaps the most exciting prospect of the study is the finding that#the closest potential Earthlike planet is only 12 lightyears away.
Using data from Kepler lead author Erik Petigura and his team analyzed 42000 G -and K-type stars visible to the naked eye from Earth.
These stars'surface temperatures range from just a bit hotter than the sun's 5778 Kelvin to as cool as 4100 Kelvin all of which are hotter than the M-class red dwarfs studied previously.
I do think that this work is a new chapter but it's not a new book Petigura tells Popular Science.
Indeed earlier this year Petigura published another paper that investigated the prevalence of planets as small as Earth but only those within the orbit of Mercury much closer to the star than Earth's orbit.
With the study published this week Petigura and his team are pushing that out to periods that are more similar to Earthlike periods
which house planets that have lukewarm temperatures similar to Earth. Out of those 42000 stars the team found 603 planets 10 of which fit the bill for orbit
and size#similar to Earth's. But if left it at that there would be a significant number#of planets unaccounted for.
So using custom-built software called TERRA Petigura corrected for the challenges associated with finding all of the planets orbiting stars in the Kepler field
and reached a total of 8000 Earthlike planets. I have been working a lot of late nights coming home after dark.
And around this of year the constellation Cygnus is high overhead and I've been looking up at these stars quite a bit Petigura says.
I was remembering questions I had when I was a little kid looking up and wondering how many of those stars have planets that are in some way like the Earth.
And learning more about planets with similar positioning and properties to Earth could of course aid in scientists'search for life and even future habitable sites.
I'm not saying we found Earth 2. 0 Petigura says. But it's an important stepping stone to answering that question.
I feel so fortunate to be alive in a time when we're even able to start answering this question e
#Preventing Superbugs By Deactivating Antibiotics With A Flash Of Light Bacterial resistance is becoming one of the most serious problems in the medical world
and it's largely a problem of our own making. We've become so good at making
and distributing antibiotics to kill bacteria that as the antibiotics build up in the environment the bacteria are becoming immune.
or at all and get a job after graduation. â#Doing scientific research in Antarctica is incredibly important and expensive According to a March 2012 article in the NSF-funded Antarctic Sun
while others are attacking more abstract ones like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance of course but also impact.
Viruses are the most abundant entities on the planet and among the most mysterious. Mya Breitbart a microbial ecologist at the University of South Florida has figured out how to quickly decipher what they are and
Her contributions have been pivotal in unmasking the enormous diversity of viruses on the planet says Curtis Suttle a marine virologist at the University of British columbia.
while others are attacking more abstract ones like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance of course but also impact.
They play a complex role in the atmosphere and in any potential climate change scenario. But rudimentary data has simplified their role in simulations leading to variability among climate models.
while others are attacking more abstract ones like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance of course but also impact.
Soon Cappos hopes to use Seattle to surf the Net from the International space station too. Click here to see more from our annual celebration of young researchers whose innovations will change the world.
while others are attacking more abstract ones like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance of course but also impact.
An associate professor of food safety and plant biosecurity at Virgina Tech Schmale sends drones armed with petri dishes into the atmosphere to capture airborne crop pathogens.
With the data he has collected thus far Schmale has built a model of atmospheric circulation that shows large sections of air sweeping across the face of the planet like waves across an ocean transporting dust and microbes thousands of miles.
while others are attacking more abstract ones like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance of course but also impact.
while others are attacking more abstract ones like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance of course but also impact.
while others are attacking more abstract ones like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance of course but also impact.
zee44. comwhen the shark looks up from the depths of the water seeing the surface with the swimmer having the sun overhead silhouetting the swimmer the happy shark with open its mighty jaws with delight of his soon to be eaten meal of
what he believes is a seal shadowing the sun. Of course biting the diver will be a little a big wad of gume with the camouflage rubber wet suit.
practically anything on the planet certainly sperm cells even skin cells (as this reseach so obviously shows.
In addition to the underlying cause a death certificate has space for up to 20 additional causes. That's where cocaine or antidepressants would show up.
No bees on Mars just sayin...It is GMO CROPS watch the documentary on Netflix or go to rt. com Brainless Americans you are the reasons corporations have taken over our government
Lucas K. â##If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth man would only have four years left to live. â#â##Albert Einsteinthere's a long article Colony collapse disorder on wikipedia that is definitely worth reading
and animals then the statement â##.If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth man would only have four years left to live...
#Russia Will Launch Its First Moon Mission Since The 1970s Roscosmos the Russian federal space agency will launch an unmanned mission to the moon in 2015 according to agency head Vladimir Popovkin.
The rocket carrying the robotic probe called Luna-Glob will be the first set off from Russia's new Far east launchpad the Vostochny cosmodrome.
Last year President Vladimir Putin pledged to pour $1 billion into the new launch site located near China.
Luna-Glob the first of four planned Russian moon missions will carry scientific equipment to take soil samples
State-run news agency Ria Novosti has said that it will carry dust monitors and plasma sensors to sense high-energy cosmic rays as well.
It will be the first Russian trip to the moon since the 1970s. Roscosmos'latest moon exploration project has been postponed several times
since 2010 and will be its first mission after 2011's Phobos-Grunt failure. The probe set to collect samples from the Martian moon Phobos unsuccessfully aimed its course for Mars
and crashed into the Pacific ocean after two months in Earth's orbit. Luna-Glob and its successors are part of a larger plan to revamp development of Russia's space industry.
Plans are also in development to send a manned spacecraft to the moon in 2018. Washington post I like the moon.
I hope we humans and robots settle there. Besides it will give the humans a place to stay after the robots take over the Earth.
When I read the title I thought they were doing a manned mission. It would be good to see people leave the confines of low orbit for the first time in 50 years.
Plus they could use it as practice/tests for going to mars. It's about time the space faring governments of the world start building an infrastructure on the lunar surface that will support long term duration stays ship yards fuel generation and processing navigation stations for terrestrial navigation
and launch facilities on the moon. This is what robots should be doing there about now.
Otherwise we'll never get there in a reasonable amount of time. Can't believe the Russian government will spend billions launching more lunar probes
or even spend billions more on a manned lunar mission in the next 5 years. It has no value to them especially
since the feat has already been accomplished. The only possible reason I can imagine for Putin to make this announcement of a manned lunar program is to create interest within the Chinese government.
The Chinese have aspirations for putting a man on the moon and maybe Putin feels the Russians could make a profit selling a lunar space system to the Chinese.
Well think if we improve our ability to send larger and larger payloads to the moon then we could use it for useful things.
Like building giant greenhouses to grow food on to help take some strain off earth's resources.
It might not be a huge amount at first but theres thousands of square kilometers up there and we could build it up over time.
Just imagine thousands of kilometers of farm without having to clear cut thousands of kilometers of forest or other habitat on earth...
Like building giant greenhouses to grow food on to help take some strain off earth's resources...
Since the lunar environment has none of the resources needed for agriculture (except for sunlight) just how would this take some of the strain off earth's resources?
We would have to launch water CO2 soil chemical fertilizers the materials to construct the greenhouses
Then we would need the massive spacecraft able to transport these agricultural products back to earth.
But don't forget as far as sunlight is concerned. On the moon you have 14 of our days of sunlight and then 14 of our days of dark.
But don't forget as far as sunlight is concerned. On the moon the sunlight is moderated not by an atmosphere.
Agreed d
#This Woman Sees 100 Times More Colors Than The Average Person When Concetta Antico looks at a leaf she sees much more than just green.
Around the edge I ll see orange or red or purple in the shadow; you might see dark green
#Using Lasers To Save Earth's Cultural Monuments History is unwritten by the destruction of great artifacts.
and spacesuit pioneer ILC Dover to develop its proprietary UV-and weather-resistant fabric. B The first commercial BAT will house a 30-kilowatt turbine
In the Arctic for example there isn't enough sunlight to justify solar power for months at a time
#Satellite data Maps Sea floor's Hidden Depths While many detailed maps exist of Earth s continents
what lies beneath our planet s waters has remained somewhat of a mystery. So far only 10 percent of the seafloor has been mapped at high resolution leaving researchers pretty eager to know what s going on in that other 90 percent.
Harnessing never-before-used satellite altimeter data from the European space agency s (ESA) Cryosat-2 and NASA s Jason-1 the scientists have created stunning maps of Earth s entire seafloor bringing to light mountains
and ridges that have never before been charted. The maps give the researchers a new understanding of deep ocean plate tectonics and little-studied ocean basins.
The vibrant images of these underwater landscapes were crafted by measuring gravity at various parts of the ocean.
According to lead researcher David Sandwell both the satellites are tasked with capturing the Earth s gravity field over the oceans.
The satellites orbit the earth and sends out thousands of radar pulses a second Sandwell a#geophysics professor#at Scripps.#
and it will perturb the gravity field locally. That perturbation is expressed in the sea surface as a bump.
By mapping out all the bumps and indentions in the water the researchers had a pretty good snapshot of the variations in the Earth s crust.
In order to determine how much underwater mass was associated with a surface bump the researchers developed a scientific model using the laws of gravity calibrated by actual measurements taken by survey ships.
When you launch a missile from a submarine its launch characteristics are going to be perturbed by the gravity field Sandwell explains.
The military and even some civilian people need this gravity model to do corrections to their underwater sensors.#
what we have with maps of Mars and Mercury Sandwell says. We know more about these other planets than we know about the sea floor.
We need to try to make high resolution maps everywhere.##The researchers published their findings in the journal Science e
#Dramatic Ice Loss Is Messing With Antarctica's Gravity Just when you wondered if climate change news couldn't get much worse along comes proof that it's affected one of the fundamental forces of nature:
The ice sheet covering West Antarctica lost enough mass between 2009 and 2012 to cause a measurable dip in the region's gravity field.
As Eric Holthaus noted in Slate it's a very small decrease in gravity far from enough to send any penguins sea lions
or research scientists floating into space. But the finding is especially troubling combined with the news Popular Science reported back in May that the collapse of some West Antarctic glaciers due to rising global temperatures is now very likely unstoppable.
According to the European space agency scientists discovered the gravity change by combining readings from the ESA's GOCE satellite
which has been taking high-resolution measurements of Earth's gravity for the past four years with those of the American-German orbiter GRACE which uses gravity data to measure changes in ice mass.
-or no-carbon economic development projects such as expanding their energy generation capacity with renewables like sun and wind instead of fossil fuels.
#Earth's Water Is Older Than The Sun Since water is one of the vital ingredients for life On earth scientists want to know how it got here.
One theory is that the water in our solar system was created in the chemical afterbirth of the Sun
. If that were the case it would suggest that water might only be common around certain stars that form in certain ways.#
#But a new study published today in Science suggests that at least some of Earth s water actually existed before the Sun was born
--and that it came from interstellar space.##That s certainly something to ponder the next time you drink a glass of water.#
--and maybe life#--may be ubiquitous throughout the galaxy.##If water in the early Solar system was inherited primarily as ice from interstellar space then it is likely that similar ices
along with the prebiotic organic matter that they contain are abundant in most or all protoplanetary disks around forming stars study author Conel Alexander explained in a press release.#
#The researchers concluded that a significant portion of Earth s water came from interstellar space by looking at the relative abundance of hydrogen and deuterium.#
#Deuterium is like hydrogen s heavier#brother. Both atoms have one proton in their nuclei
#In interstellar space for example water ice contains lots of deuterium thanks to the freezing cold temperatures and ionizing radiation.
whether Earth's deuterium came from space or whether it was cooked up in the birth of the Sun.#To find out researchers used mathematical models to#virtually recreate#the young solar system's protoplanetary disk--the cloud around the newborn#Sun. They found that based on the temperature
and radiation conditions that would have existed back then it wasn t possible for the young solar system to create the ratios of hydrogen
and deuterium that scientists observe in Earth s oceans and on comets. Because of that the researchers estimate that anywhere between 7 and 50 percent of Earth s water had to have come from the interstellar medium in
which the solar system was born. And since other solar systems would have formed in the same interstellar medium the findings suggest that the origins of water On earth were not unique
and that the thirst-quenching#life-supporting substance may be common on exoplanets throughout the galaxy x
#Facebook Says Wi-fi Drones Will be sized Jumbo jet If a new Facebook plan is successful the easiest way to access the cloud may be...
#in the clouds. Facebook wants to spread Wi-fi Internet to unconnected parts of the world with drones
and at#a summit in New york earlier this week the company revealed those drones will be the size of jumbo jets.
Snake bots slithering like their reptilian namesakes are great at crawling through narrow spaces but they're fairly slow.
When the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing future versions of this battery could release energy captured during more productive times into nations'power grids.
It also might make sun-and wind-produced electricity cheaper; by storing extra energy that isn't being used less electricity is wasted in the long run.
--were housed in little more than a couple of glorified wooden cigar boxes leaving vast amounts of empty space between the rear wheels.
Spacex And Boeing Will Take You Ladies and gentlemen we have a winner-well two actually.
Today NASA announced that two private companies will be tasked with taxiing NASA ASTRONAUTS to and from the International space station beginning in 2017.
And the spoils go to Boeing and Spacex. The companies will sign contracts with NASA to further develop their spacecraft to deliver astronauts to and from the ISS.
Boeing will receive $4. 2 billion to build its CST-100 spacecraft a vehicle it has been working on for the past four years
while Spacex will receive $2. 6 billion to create an upgraded rendition of its Dragon spacecraft aptly named Dragon Version 2. The original Dragon is currently being used to ferry cargo from Earth to the ISS.
The CST-100 and Dragon V2 outwardly look similar to NASA s Orion capsule but they can both hold up to seven crewmembers each.
To get to the ISS Boeing's CST-100 will be launched on the United Launch Alliance's Atlas v rocket
and Spacex will launch the Dragon V2 on its own Falcon 9 v1. 1 rocket. This was not an easy choice NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said at the Sept. 16 announcement
but this is the best choice for NASA and the nation. The partnership is part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program
which was established in 2010 to foster the development of a U s. commercial crew space transportation capability.
The idea was to make trips to space both safe and cost effective and private companies have demonstrated for some time that they can send rockets to space for a fraction of the cost.
Most importantly though is that the program will end bring an end to NASA's reliance on Russian spacecraft to ferry astronauts from Earth to the ISS.
Since the end of the Space shuttle program in 2011 NASA ASTRONAUTS have been hitching rides on Russian Soyuz rockets.
The arrangement doesn't do much for the American ego especially since the recent Ukraine conflict has soured the relationship between Russia
and the United states. Plus rides on the Soyuz don't come cheap costing about $70 million a pop.
We don't know for sure how much it will cost to launch the Dragon or the CST-100 but Bigelow Aerospace estimates the cost per ride may be cut almost in half.
Spacex and Boeing beat out a number of other private companies for the NASA gig including another big contender the Sierra nevada Corp. All three companies had been involved in an earlier phase of the program in
which NASA awarded them a total of $1. 4 billion in Space Act Agreements and contracts to get their ideas up and running.
Despite not being chosen for the program Sierra nevada plans to further develop its Shuttle-esque vehicle the Dream Chaser perhaps as a resupply vehicle or for commercial space flight t
#The Rise Of Open source Hardware So in the summer of 2012 Petrone (then an engineer at a Portland startup) launched a site where flexible matrix boards
and laser motion sensors could be sold alongside build-it-yourself weather monitoring kits and robot birds.
but others are large entities like the Australian government Google and NASA. These days Petrone says NASA s purchasing department just calls my cell phone.#
#The site has gained also a strong following from hard-core DIY types. Just as Etsy became the go-to marketplace for craft creators Tindie has become the primary hub for hardware aficionados.
it now stands as the largest collection of open-source hardware on the planet. Nothing on the site is patented
The Doom engine is a computer program that can render 2-D blueprints into a 3-D space.
and create a live data set for every aspect of a space including the electrical engineering millwork and piping.
They beamed radar and lasers into the ground and wheeled scanners over a vast area to study subtle changes in the Earth's magnetic field.#
At rest it looks like a tiny spaceship from a 1930s comic book. It s a type of Vertical Takeoff or Landing (VTOL) rarely done with humans on board because#that transition from vertical to horizontal and back again is difficult for onboard human pilots to manage.
#This Weird Tumbleweed Robot Might Change Planetary Exploration This Super Ball Bot is the vision of NASA roboticist Vytas Sunspiral#yes that's his real name
When it comes to Titan the researchers envision dropping Super Ball Bots that are covered each by a heat shield to protect them from burning up in Titan's atmosphere.
Titan has a surface gravity a little more than one-seventh that of Earth which means the terminal velocity of the robots#the fastest they will fall in Titan's thick atmosphere#is about 33 mph roughly equivalent to the speed reached after a 30-foot drop On earth.
Early prototypes we dropped could survive that type of impact Sunspiral says. These robots would find it more difficult to survive a drop onto Mars
since the red planet has both a thinner atmosphere and stronger gravity than Titan meaning they would reach a higher terminal velocity.
But maybe a simple parachute could slow them down enough for a safe landing Sunspiral says.
We're still answering the question of what the highest speeds these robots can land at are.
which is vital on space missions where space is tight. In addition the fact that all the control systems of the robots fit into caps at the ends of each rod means we can build robots of a variety of scales#we can make the robots twice as big
In addition the researchers also developed a way for the robots to learn how to roll on their own with the help of evolutionary algorithms which is valuable for robots operating by themselves on another planet where the rules for movement might differ from those On earth.
But a great deal more work is needed before this ever becomes a NASA mission Sunspiral says. To help make tensegrity robots a reality Sunspiral
and his colleagues have released the open-source NASA tensegrity robotics toolkit which is online for free and built on the Bullet Physics engine a game physics simulator.
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