Aging Mars Rover Gets A Power Boost

Mars rover Spirit

From Yahoo News/Space:

NASA's aging Mars rover Spirit has a bit more power under its hood thanks to some Martian winds that cleaned dust from its vital solar panels.

The handy cleaning occurred earlier this month and was discovered by engineers scanning data from Spirit's power subsystem.

"We will be able to use this energy to do significantly more driving," said Colette Lohr, a rover mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "Our drives have been averaging about 50 minutes, and energy has usually been the limiting factor. We may be able to increase that to drives of an hour and a half."

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Our Grid: Powering Our 21st Century Lives With a 19th Century Design

Transformer TRP: FearChild on WikiMedia

From Pop Science:

PopSci.com welcomes Dr. Bill Chameides, dean of Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. Dr. Chameides blogs at The Green Grok to spark lively discussions about environmental science, keeping you in the know on what the scientific world is discovering and how it affects you – all in plain language and, hopefully, with a bit of fun. Now, PopSci.com partners with The Green Grok to bring you exclusive new blog posts a week before they hit the Grok's blog. Give it a read and get in on the discussion!

Can you hear it? The buzz on smart grids is getting louder. News reports on green jobs are peppered with talk of a “smart grid.” Google returns 929,000 pages for the term. Even Congress is in the swim, greening the stimulus package with $11 billion for a smart grid. So is Congress wise to fund it? Or are we buying an electrical bridge to nowhere? In this and a post to follow, we’ll look at why smart grids are a smart move.

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Scientists Close In On 'Universal' Vaccine For Flu: Study

From Breitbart/AFP:

Scientists on Sunday unveiled lab-made human antibodies that can disable several types of influenza, including highly-lethal H5N1 bird flu and the "Spanish Flu" strain that killed tens of millions in 1918.

Tested in mice, the antibodies work by binding to a previously obscure structure in the flu virus which, when blocked, sabotages the pathogen's ability to enter the cell it is trying to infect, according to the study.

Because this structure -- described by one scientist as a "viral Achilles' heel" -- is genetically stable and has resisted mutation over time, the antibodies are effective against many different strains.

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Top 10 Science Fiction Books, Movies And TV Shows

The 10 Most Influential UFO-Inspired Books, Movies and TV Shows -- Popular Mechanics

UFO culture began in the late 40’s, when a pilot’s account of a midair encounter with mysterious aircraft triggered similar reports across the United States. Authors, movie producers and a few hack journalists were quick to respond. By the late 1950s, pop culture was completely preoccupied with aliens, and the clichés it created then have been repeated and reinvented ever since. Here are the books, TV shows and movies that helped create the mythology of UFOs in America. They aren’t the best, or the worst, but the ones that made the most impact on the prevailing American superstition of our time.

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2009 Oscars: PM Predicts Winners for Sci/Tech Categories

From Popular Mechanics:

PM takes to the red carpet to find out who movie industry experts expect to win for audio and visual achievement at the 81st annual Academy Awards, airing Feb. 22 at 8 pm on ABC. Check back Feb. 23 to see how our experts fared—and to get their assessment of why they might have been wrong.

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NASA Delays Space Shuttle Launch A Fourth Time

NASA workers watch as the space shuttle Discovery is moved to the launch site at the Kennedy Space Center in January. NASA has postponed the launch of the space shuttle Discovery for a fourth time, but without setting a new target date to send the orbiter to the International Space Station (ISS). (AFP/Getty Images/File/Matt Stroshane)

From Yahoo News/AP:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA delayed the launch of space shuttle Discovery for a fourth time on Friday amid valve concerns, and managers are uncertain when the flight will take place.

Following a 13-hour meeting at Kennedy Space Center, shuttle managers decided against launching next week. The launch had been targeted for no sooner than Feb. 27; no new date was set.

Officials said they believe they have a realistic shot at launching Discovery to the international space station before mid-March. After that, the shuttle would have to get in line behind a Russian Soyuz launch with a new space station crew, and the next opportunity for Discovery would be after April 6.

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More News On The Space Shuttle

NASA Defers Setting Next Shuttle Launch Date -- FOX News
Launch of space shuttle Discovery delayed indefinitely -- Wikinews
NASA launch remains uncertain -- Red Orbit
NASA Making Agonizing Decision Over Discovery Launch -- MSNBC
NASA delays Discovery launch a fourth time -- AFP
NASA postpones space shuttle Discovery's launch for fourth time -- China View
NASA delays space shuttle launch a fourth time -- AP

Is Genius Born or Can It Be Learned?

Albert Einstein. Photo from Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Is it possible to cultivate genius? Could we somehow structure our educational and social life to produce more Einsteins and Mozarts — or, more urgently these days, another Adam Smith or John Maynard Keynes?

How to produce genius is a very old question, one that has occupied philosophers since antiquity. In the modern era, Immanuel Kant and Darwin's cousin Francis Galton wrote extensively about how genius occurs. Last year, pop-sociologist Malcolm Gladwell addressed the subject in his book Outliers: The Story of Success.

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Single-celled Algae Took The Leap To Multicellularity 200 Million Years Ago

Pleodorina starrii has an incomplete division of labor. Although the 12 small cells near the top of this colony only swim, the 20 larger cells both swim and reproduce. (Credit: Copyright 2008 Matthew Herron)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2009) — Some algae have been hanging together rather than going it alone much longer than previously thought, according to new research.

Ancestors of Volvox algae made the transition from being a single-celled organism to becoming a multicellular colony at least 200 million years ago, during the Triassic Period.

At that time, Earth was a hot-house world whose inhabitants included tree ferns, dinosaurs and early mammals. Previous estimates had suggested Volvox's ancestors arose only 50 million years ago.

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What's An Oscar Really Made Of?

From Live Science:

On Sunday, nominated movie stars will show up at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre hoping to walk away clutching one of those glowing statuettes. But there's more to that golden guy than meets the eye.

When they pick up their trophies, the winning celebs are toting around 8.5 pounds of metal. Oscar is 13.5 inches (34 centimeters) tall.

The Oscar statuettes, officially dubbed the Academy Award of Merit, have a 24-karat gold plating on their surface.

Beneath the gold, the statuette's interior is a metal mixture called Britannium, also called Britannia metal. It is an alloy of tin (93 percent), antimony (5 percent), and copper (2 percent). It's known for its smooth texture and silvery appearance.

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Scientists Make Advances On 'Nano' Electronics

Axial quadrupole nanostructures in an illustration courtesy of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Two U.S. teams have developed new materials that may pave the way for ever smaller, faster and more powerful electronics as current semiconductor technology begins to reach the limits of miniaturization. Photo: REUTERS/Handout

From Wired Science/Reuters:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Two U.S. teams have developed new materials that may pave the way for ever smaller, faster and more powerful electronics as current semiconductor technology begins to reach the limits of miniaturization.

One team has made tiny transistors -- the building block of computer processors -- a fraction of the size of those used on advanced silicon chips.

Another has made a film material capable of storing data from 250 DVDs onto a surface the size of a coin.

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As The World's Languages Disappear, Basque Revives

From McClatchy:

ST. JEAN DE LUZ, France — The world is losing languages at an alarming rate, a United Nations agency reported Thursday, with thousands of tongues expected to disappear by the end of this century.

Yet amid the losses, one community — the Basque people, who live in the mountainous region of southern France and northern Spain — is reviving a language that many once feared would die out.

In St. Jean de Luz, a seaside town near the Spanish border at the western edge of the Pyrenees, efforts are under way to revitalize the Basque language, which 30 years ago was rarely heard outside mountain villages. Among a population of about 3 million in the Basque region, which comprises seven provinces in Spain and France, an estimated 700,000 people speak Basque today.

Bilingual signs dot the roads and mark storefronts, and an annual festival celebrates the Basque language, music and culture. Public and private schools full of children and adults learn Basque.

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It's All Systems Go For Europa

Europa, dwarfed by Jupiter, is in the center of this image taken by the Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 7, 2000. "Europa is tremendously exciting," a NASA official said. NASA

From The L.A. Times:

NASA unveils plans for a 20-year project to send a spacecraft to Jupiter's ice-covered moon in a search for life.

NASA announced plans Wednesday to embark on a mammoth 20-year project to send a spacecraft to Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa as its next flagship mission to search for life elsewhere in the solar system.

The mission, which could cost as much as $3 billion, will be managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. It will focus on the possibility that in the gigantic ocean thought to be hidden under the moon's thick cover of ice is a habitable zone where rudimentary forms of life could exist.

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Arctic Sea Ice Underestimated For Weeks Due To Faulty Sensor

From Bloomberg:

A glitch in satellite sensors caused scientists to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), a California- size area, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said.

The error, due to a problem called “sensor drift,” began in early January and caused a slowly growing underestimation of sea ice extent until mid-February. That’s when “puzzled readers” alerted the NSIDC about data showing ice-covered areas as stretches of open ocean, the Boulder, Colorado-based group said on its Web site.

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Update: Sea Ice Sensor Degradation Hits Cryosphere Today -- Watts Up With That?

Cosmic Stage Set for Comet Lulin's Fly-By

Comet Lulin as photographed by amateur astronomer Jack Newton in Arizona.
Jack Newton/NASA

From FOX News/Space.com:

A recently discovered comet is making its closest approach to Earth in the next few days and offers anyone with binoculars or a small telescope a chance to see some frozen leftovers of our solar system's making.

Comet Lulin has, as expected, crossed the threshold to naked-eye visibility for people with dark, rural skies. It hovers just inside that envelope of visibility, however, and is not likely visible from cities, where the glare of urban lights can drown out all but the brightest night-sky objects.

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Atlantis Revealed At Last... Or Just A Load Of Old Googles?

False hopes: Google said the grid-like markings, thought to reveal the location of mythical underwater city Atlantis, are an artifact of its map making process

From The Daily Mail:

For centuries the story of Atlantis has captured the imagination - a fabled city of great beauty, culture and wealth that was suddenly swallowed up by the ocean.

Its location - or at least the source of the legend - remained a tantalising mystery. Was it really in the Mediterranean and not in the Atlantic at all?

Some claim its ruins lie beneath the waves off the coast of Cornwall. Others say they've been found in the Black Sea.

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NASA's Kepler Mission To Seek Other Earths

Artist's concept of Kepler in space. (Credit: NASA/JPL)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2009) — NASA's Kepler spacecraft is ready to be moved to the launch pad today and will soon begin a journey to search for worlds that could potentially host life.

Kepler is scheduled to blast into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., aboard a Delta II rocket on March 5 at 7:48 p.m. Pacific Time (10:48 p.m. Eastern Time). It is the first mission with the ability to find planets like Earth -- rocky planets that orbit sun-like stars in a warm zone where liquid water could be maintained on the surface. Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.

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Most Wars Occur in Biodiversity Hotspots

Photo from My Daily Clarity

From Live Science:

More than 80 percent of the world's major armed conflicts from 1950-2000 occurred in regions identified as the most biologically diverse and threatened places on Earth.

Scientists compared major conflict zones with the Earth's 34 biodiversity hotspots identified by Conservation International (CI). The hotspots are considered top conservation priorities because they contain the entire populations of more than half of all plant species and at least 42 percent of all vertebrates, and are highly threatened.

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Pentagon Official: U.S. Is Not Developing Space Weapons

The USS Lake Erie launches a Standard Missile-3 at a non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite as it traveled in space at more than 17,000 mph over the Pacific Ocean on Feb. 20, 2008. Credit: Defense Dept. photo by U.S. Navy

From Live Science:

STRASBOURG, France - The United States is not developing space weapons and could not afford to do so even if it wanted to, an official with the Pentagon's National Security Space Office said Thursday.

Pete Hays, a senior policy analyst at the space office who is also associate director of the Eisenhower Center for Space and Defense Studies, said U.S. policy on space weaponry has remained pretty much the same over the last 30 years despite the occasionally heated debate on the subject during the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush.

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Lessons In Survival

Illustration by Josh Cochran for Newsweek

From Newsweek:

The science that explains why elite military forces bounce back faster than the rest of us.

In a laboratory, it's extremely difficult to study why some people are better at bouncing back than others because it's so hard to simulate the real stresses and strains of life. Scientists can show people scary pictures or movies to trigger their reactions and measure how they recover, but it's hardly the same as a mugger in an alley or a grizzly bear on a hiking trail. Dr. Andy Morgan of Yale Medical School set out to find a real-world laboratory where he could watch people under incredible stress in reasonably controlled conditions.

He ended up in southeastern North Carolina at Fort Bragg, home of the Army's elite Airborne and Special Forces. This is where the Army's renowned survival school is located. It's also where they believe in something called stress inoculation. Like vaccines, a small challenge or dose of a virus in your system prepares and defends you against a bigger challenge. In other words, they expose you to pressure and suffering in training so you'll build up your immunity. It's a kind of classic psychological conditioning: the more shocks to your system, the more you're able to withstand.

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Why Would A Chimpanzee Attack A Human?

A DANGEROUS COUSIN: This chimp from the Knoxville Zoo bears its teeth to visitors, who observe from behind glass. Chimpanzees have been known to bite off fingers from behind bars. FLICKR/THE GUT

From Scientific American:

After a chimp mutilated a Connecticut woman's face, some are questioning the wisdom of keeping wild animals as pets

Earlier this week, a 14-year-old, 200-pound (90-kilogram) pet chimpanzee in Stamford, Conn., left a woman in critical condition after attacking her—mutilating her face and hands. The owner, Sandra Herold, who tried to stop the attack, was also injured and briefly hospitalized. The victim remains in critical condition.

The chimp, Travis, who was shot and killed by police officers at the scene, was apparently a friendly fixture around the neighborhood. He appeared in television commercials and had a sapiens-level CV that included using a computer, bathing and sipping wine from a stemmed glass, according to The New York Times. Reports, however, are starting to surface that Travis might have bitten another woman in 1996 and that Herold had been warned by animal control that her pet could be dangerous.

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