Science & TechnologyS


Question

What the heck is a WePad?

Juergen Baetz
The Christian Science Monitor
Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
WePad
© NEWSCOMThe CEO of 'Neofonie Technologieentwicklung und Informationsmanagement GmbH', Helmut Hoffer von Ankershoffen, presents the company's new tablet pc WePad in Berlin, Germany on April 12, 2010.
The German maker of a new tablet PC is setting out to rival Apple's iPad with the promise of even more technology such as a bigger screen, a webcam and USB ports.

It is not, however, an "iPad killer" as it has been dubbed by some blogs but an alternative to its bigger rival, Neofonie GmbH's founder and managing director Helmut Hoffer von Ankershoffen told reporters on Monday in Berlin.

Ankershoffen stressed the system's openness: Two USB ports allow users to connect all kinds of devices with the WePad, from external keyboards to data sticks.

People who want to put music on their WePad do not have to have any particular software, Ankershoffen said - a blow at Apple's devices that require particular Apple software like iTunes.

The WePad's basic version, which comes with Wi-Fi and 16-gigabyte storage, is set to cost €449 ($600), the larger 32-gigabyte version with a fast 3G modem is €569.

Ankershoffen claimed that given its technological superiority and greater openness, "that's a bargain compared with the iPad."
Read More...
Saturn

Astronomers find 9 new planets and upset the theory of planetary formation

Gail Gallessich
eurekalert.org
Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:22 UTC
Image
© ESO/L. CalçadaThis is a gallery of exoplanets with retrograde orbits. Exoplanets, discovered by WASP together with ESO telescopes, that unexpectedly have been found to have retrograde orbits, are shown in this artist's conception. In all cases the star is shown to scale, with its rotation axis pointing up and with realistic colors.
Santa Barbara, California - - The discovery of nine new planets challenges the reigning theory of the formation of planets, according to new observations by astronomers. Two of the astronomers involved in the discoveries are based at the UC Santa Barbara-affiliated Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), based in Goleta, Calif., near UCSB.

Unlike the planets in our solar system, two of the newly discovered planets are orbiting in the opposite direction to the rotation of their host star. This, along with a recent study of other exoplanets, upsets the primary theory of how planets are formed. There is a preponderance of these planets with their orbital spin going opposite to that of their parent star. They are called exoplanets because they are located outside of our solar system.

These and other related discoveries are being presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, this week. This is the first public mention of the new planets and the research will be described in upcoming scientific journal articles.
Read More...
Saturn

Obama aims to send astronauts to Mars orbit in 2030s


Space-travel.com
Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:49 UTC
Image
© Matt Stroshane/Getty Images/AFPU.S. President Barack Obama (R) exits Air Force One with U.S. Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) US Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden and former Astronaut Buzz Aldrin at the shuttle landing facility at Kennedy Space Center April 15, 2010 in Cape Canaveral, Floridia. Obama is holding a summit to discuss the future of the space program.
US President Barack Obama said Thursday he is aiming to send US astronauts into Mars orbit in the mid-2030s as he sought to quell protests over his earlier space policies.

"By 2025 we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first ever crew missions beyond the moon into deep space," Obama told an audience at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"So, we'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to earth, and a landing on Mars will follow."

Obama, who was accompanied on his trip by astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, vowed he was "100 percent committed" to NASA's mission as he sought to set a new course for future US space travel.

The US president was making a whirlwind trip to the heart of the US space industry after he was hit with stinging criticism for dropping the costly Constellation project which had aimed to put Americans back on the moon.
Read More...
Rocket

Indian rocket flops, crashing into sea


Space-travel.com
Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:47 UTC
Image
An Indian rocket showcasing domestically built booster technology crashed soon after take-off on Thursday in a blow to the country's space ambitions, officials said.

The launch of the first Indian-made cryogenic powered rocket, a complex technology mastered by just five countries, failed soon after lift-off from India's space centre at Sriharikota in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh.

"The rocket along with the satellite tumbled from space and plunged into the Bay of Bengal," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) director S. Satish told AFP from Sriharikota.

Satish said controllers lost contact with the 50-metre (165-foot) rocket, named GSLV and carrying a 2.2-tonne satellite, and it plunged into the sea eight minutes after the launch.
Read More...
Meteor

Ulysses Reveals A Comet Biggie


Space Daily
Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:42 UTC
Image
Using data from the completed ESA/NASA Ulysses mission, scientists have identified a new candidate for biggest comet. Results of these findings were presented at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow by Ulysses science team member Geriant Jones of University College, London.

The primary mission of the Ulysses spacecraft was to characterize the sun's heliosphere as a function of solar latitude. The heliosphere is the vast region of interplanetary space occupied by the sun's atmosphere and dominated by the outflow of the solar wind.

To study the heliosphere, Ulysses was placed into a six-year orbit around the sun that carried it out to Jupiter's orbit and back. Covering such a vast expanse of space provided unique and unexpected opportunities for the spacecraft. During its more than 17-year mission, Ulysses had three unplanned encounters with comet tails.
Read More...
Satellite

Building A Space Weather Forecasting System Using STEREO And ACE


Space Daily
Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:40 UTC
Image
Scientists from the University of Leicester have used observations from NASA's STEREO and ACE satellites to come up with more accurate predictions of when blasts of solar wind will reach Earth, Venus and Mars. Anthony Williams presented the results at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow.

Recently, we have recently been experiencing an unusually quiet and long-lasting solar minimum, and solar storms caused by Coronal Mass Ejections have been scarce. Despite this, high pressure pulses of solar wind, called Coronal Interaction Regions (CIRs) have been keeping the space weather unpredictable.

CIRs arise when fast moving solar wind particles gushing out of a coronal hole catch a slower flow ahead and the plasma becomes compressed.
Read More...
Eye 2

Therapy only furthers psychopaths' agendas

Steve Becker
lovefraud.com
Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:19 UTC
What can we say about the games sociopaths play in psychotherapy? We might start with: Sociopaths don't seek counseling, ever, from a genuine motive to make personal growth.

This isn't to say sociopaths don't end up in therapists' offices. They do, either because they've been mandated to attend therapy, or because they view counseling, somehow, as enabling their ulterior, manipulative agenda.

But never does the sociopath, on his own, awaken one day and say to himself, "I've got some personal issues I need to examine seriously, for which pursuing psychotherapy is probably imperative - otherwise my life and relationships are going down the drain."

I repeat, sociopaths will never, ever, seek counseling for purposes of genuinely confronting their damaged, and damaging, personalities. This is so reliable a principle that its converse equally applies - however antisocial his history may be or seem, the client who seeks counseling with a genuine motive to deal with a issue(s) disqualifies himself, perforce, as a sociopath.
Read More...
Magnify

Genetically Engineered Pigs


Urban Garden Magazine
Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:04 UTC
Image

The Mad Hatter world of industrial agriculture has announced another victory: the University of Guelph in Canada has genetically engineered pigs whose manure contains 30-70% less phosphorus than that of regular pigs.

If you're one of those crazy soil-gardeners who believe that manure is heavenly and should be revered, well ... clearly you don't manage an intensive hog operation. These factory farms are dealing with an environmental (not to mention ethical) crisis: phosphorus pollution of surface and groundwater, as a result of the massive manure lagoons and run-off.

Developed in 1999, and now on its way to commercial production and a place on grocery store shelves, the EnviropigTM is apparently the solution. Perhaps we should instead question the problem. Intensive hog "farms," cattle feedlots, and intensive egg production and poultry facilities are creating toxic wastelands, treating the animal inmates as nothing more than animated foodstuffs.
Read More...
Star

Source of zodiac glow identified

Maria Martinez
Southwest Research Institute
Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:55 UTC
Image
© Southwest Research InstituteThe dust between the planets, that scatters sunlight our way, is not from the asteroid belt (depicted here in green), but from periodically disrupting comets that spend much of their time near the orbit of Jupiter, according to calculations by Nesvorny and Jenniskens.
The eerie glow that straddles the night time zodiac in the eastern sky is no longer a mystery. First explained by Joshua Childrey in 1661 as sunlight scattered in our direction by dust particles in the solar system, the source of that dust was long debated. In a paper to appear in the April 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, David Nesvorny and Peter Jenniskens put the stake in asteroids. More than 85 percent of the dust, they conclude, originated from Jupiter Family comets, not asteroids.

"This is the first fully dynamical model of the zodiacal cloud," says planetary scientist Nesvorny of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "We find that the dust of asteroids is not stirred up enough over its lifetime to make the zodiacal dust cloud as thick as observed. Only the dust of short-period comets is scattered enough by Jupiter to do so."
Read More...
Magnify

Deciphering the Indus script: challenges and some headway


The Hindu
Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:45 UTC
Image
© SHAJU JOHN ASKO PARPOLA: ‘The Indus script encodes a Dravidian language.'
Interview with Professor Asko Parpola.

Dr. Asko Parpola, the Indologist from Finland, is Professor Emeritus of Indology, Institute of World Cultures, University of Helsinki, and one of the leading authorities on the Indus Civilisation and its script. On the basis of sustained work on the Indus script, he has concluded that the script - which is yet to be deciphered - encodes a Dravidian language. As a Sanskritist, his fields of specialisation include the Sama Veda and Vedic rituals. Excerpts from replies that Professor Parpola gave over e-mail to a set of questions sent to him by T.S. Subramanian in the context of his being chosen for the Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi Classical Tamil Award, 2009. The award, comprising Rs. 10 lakh and a citation, will be presented during the World Classical Tamil Conference to be held in Coimbatore from June 23 to 27, 2010. The award announcement said Professor Parpola was chosen for his work on the Dravidian hypothesis in interpreting the Indus script because the Dravidian, as described by him, was close to old Tamil. The award, administered by the Central Institute of Classical Tamil, Chennai, was instituted out of a donation of Rs. 1 crore made by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi:
Read More...