Monthly Archives: January 2010

NASA and the Summer of Innovation – Update

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Keith's 5 Jan Update: According to non-NASA sources there will be some sort of announcement by the President tomorrow regarding education. It is expected that the "Summer of Innovation", among a number of other education-oriented projects, will be announced as part of this event.

Once again, this project offers NASA an opportunity to reach a much broader audience than would normally be the case - with the full support of the White House. It would seem that this White House sees that there is more to NASA's value than just launching rockets.

Keith's 30 Dec note: President Obama will soon unveil a large, interesting educational event targeted for the summer of 2010. Titled "Summer of Innovation" this project is aimed at reaching 1 million students and working to raise their STEM skills through a variety of activities. The lead person at NASA on this effort is White House Fellow Nicole Campbell.

The cost of this project is still uncertain - numbers as high as $200 million were discussed internally at one point. Much of the work would apparently be channeled through/paid for by Americorps. The latest version of this project would entail NASA taking much of the lead along with the Department of Education. Each NASA center would be asked to dedicate one person to this activity. The most recent version of the plan would limit this activity to only 5 states. As to how the 5 states will be selected - that remains uncertain.

These uncertainties aside, it will be interesting to see how prominence for NASA in such a high visibilty event will affect the public's preception of NASA's value to the public. One would hope and expect that it would be overwhelmingly positive. Stay tuned.

Remarks for AIAA/WIA Luncheon with NASA Administrator Bolden December 9, 2009

"NASA is fortunate to have an outstanding White House Fellow assigned to our agency this year, Ms. Nicole Campbell. Nicole is spearheading some new exciting endeavors designed to enhance our current education outreach activities and focus our resources in order to get the maximum benefit for each dollar we spend. One such program is what we are calling the "Summer of Innovation." We are still in the planning stages so I won't go into a lot of detail here today, but you will be hearing more about this toward the end of the year."

2009 Highlights: NASA Finds Water on Moon, Launches Planet Search, NASA ARC

"New initiatives in 2010 will set the stage for a robust year in education and outreach. "Educate to Innovate," a federal challenge to improve education and NASA's Summer of Innovation aspire to reach one million students through enrichment programs to keep kids on track and inspire our next generation of explorers."

Keith's 30 Dec note: NASA ARC suddenly deleted this portion of their previously-issued press release after this link's appeared on NASA Watch. "Transparency"? "Openness"?

Cooling Tower Efficiency

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I have to install a small cooling tower for an extrusion process, but the industrial facility has an arch roof covering the wole area. How can the efficiency of the tower affected if installing it behind the roof instead on an open area?

I Want to Lazily Do Naughty Things on the Glowing Belly Love Sofa [Design]

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[Voice="Barry White"] When I first saw you, girl, I knew I had to make you mine. Now, I'm in the mood, baby. In the mood for...the Belly Love...Belly Love...oh yeah...I want to hold you...on that gloooowing light.

You know... the Belly Love... No, really, you know the one I mean, don't you? Yeah, the sofa with the puffy glowing moving tentacles that release a fragrance while caressing your body which I heard is inspired by a soft coral found in the Indian Ocean that you probably saw when you were drooling one day after dinner watching old Costeau re-runs on your old sofa? Yes, your old sofa. This is... the new sofa, for, you know, doing it.

And now, let's put the stereo in love mode, sweet woman of mine. I feel the love right here, glowing in my heart... and in my pants... while I get with you... in the Belly Love.



Small Submersible Load Cell

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Hello,

I need of a small, submersible load cell, that can be used in tension (threaded on one end, and can be bolted to a surface on another) that only has a capacity of 2lbs. I also need something with the amplifier built in or one that I can purchase with the load cell so that I do not ha

Hardly Anyone Really Believes in Free Speech

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A radical Islamic group planning a protest march through the streets of a town that has achieved iconic status in Britain for honoring the passing hearses of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan ran into a stiff rebuff from the British government on Monday.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a statement saying he was “personally appalled” by the group’s plan to march through the streets of Wootton Bassett, 70 miles west of London, where townspeople have lined the sidewalks since April 2007 to mourn the passing cortèges of British military casualties flown home to the nearby military airbase at Lyneham. ...

Home Secretary Alan Johnson, who is responsible for the police, said in a separate statement that he would support any request from the police or local government officials to ban the march.

The point that the opponents of the march fail to get is that suppressing the march will polarize and alienate Muslims even more.

Sony’s BDPorter Is a Portable Blu-ray Projection Machine [Sony]

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Looking for a portable projector with a built-in Blu-ray player? Who isn't? Well, Sony's new BDPorter is just that.

This rollable cabinet comes stocked with a Blu-ray player, a WXGA projector, surround sound headphones, speakers and a 60-inch screen. It's aimed mostly for corporate use as a presentations machine that can be carted around to different places, but I suppose you could import one from Japan for your house if you really wanted to. It's $7,700, however, so I'm going to go ahead and suggest you don't. [CrunchGear]



The SmartStor Zero NS2600 Is an NAS My Mom Could Use [Nas]

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We loved the Promise SmartStor NS4600 when we reviewed it over the summer. Now the Promise SmartStor Zero NS2600 has streamlined the process of connecting multiple devices even further, and made it a lot more affordable to do so.

Like the NS4600, Promise's new NAS supports DLNA standards that make it easier to share content across DLNA devices. It also implements a software management tool, called ON, that Promise says will automatically map and open network share without your having to endure the rigmarole of setting up users and permissions.

The SmartStor Zero also fixes the one major gripe we had with the NS4600, which is that it doesn't ship with drives despite the $499 price tag. SmartStor Zero starts at $270, but can also come with either one 1TB drive for $299 or two drives for $399. It will be available this quarter.

PROMISE Technology Raises the Bar for Consumer Storage with Introduction of Affordable No Muss, No Fuss SmartStor ZERO Storage at CES

DLNA-Certified SmartStor ZERO Gives Non-Techie Consumers ZERO Configuration, ZERO Frustration, ZERO Hassle in Breakthrough Network Storage Device for the Digital Home

MILPITAS, Calif. – January 5, 2010 – PROMISE Technology Inc., a leading supplier of versatile RAID storage solutions catering to customers from enterprise to consumer, is introducing worldwide its SmartStor™ ZERO NS2600 network storage device for the digital home today at the Computer Electronics Show (CES), South 4 Hall, booth # 36804 and in the DLNA Pavilion. SmartStor ZERO is one of the first network attached storage and digital media servers with support for Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) UPLOAD, allowing content – including content from mobile devices — to be uploaded to SmartStor ZERO without fuss or muss. PROMISE is also releasing DLNA Digital Media Controller (DMC) software for Windows Mobile, Android and iPhone to facilitate content upload, download, control point, digital media player and digital media server functionality in addition to offering Facebook Upload functionality, for pictures and seamless remote access for hassle-free setup and access to digital content from anywhere in the world.

The introduction of the SmartStor ZERO is an example of how PROMISE is redefining and raising the technology bar within the storage landscape," said Chi Chen Wu, CTO, PROMISE Technology. "Today's consumer does not want to be concerned with complicated setup procedures, media compatibility or dealing with the process of accessibility. The consumer wants a one, two, three approach to store, share and play music, movies and photos without the hassle of integration."

Easy to install and even easier to use, PROMISE is leading the charge to give consumers a foolproof and efficient and affordable way to take advantage of DLNA standards in order to share content with a variety of entertainment devices such as the Xbox 360, PS3, Samsung DLNA TV, Sony DLNA TV or Windows 7 PC. Utilizing a revolutionary software management tool called "ON" for both Windows and Macintosh operating systems, the SmartStor ZERO frees consumers from dealing with complicated setups or decisions that lead to frustration, confusion and product returns.

"Today consumers are put off by the configuration and management of traditional NAS devices," said Billy Harrison, product manager, CE products for NAS and DAS, PROMISE Technology. "Consumers want plug and store instant access. The process of creating users, managing permissions, managing shares and enabling/disabling services is a thing of the past. With SmartStor ZERO, we're solving the consumer's most basic problem by delivering to market a DLNA NAS-simple device anyone can use."

About SmartStor ZERO

SmartStor ZERO is a zero configuration 2-bay network attached storage and digital media server for the home and SOHO. SmartStor ZERO includes 1 or 2 hard drives and requires no lengthy or complicated setup process. Unpack, power-on, install the ON software and the rest is completely automatic. ON will map and open network share, allowing instant access for data backup and DLNA media sharing via digital media players. SmartStor ZERO functions as an iTunes Media Server, allowing music and video to be streamed using iTunes.

Making it a cinch to upload and download digital content to and from mobile devices, the SmartStor ZERO lets consumers take advantage of Album Art, thumbnails for image and video and other recently introduced Windows and Macintosh operating system features for the digital home. Additionally, the installation does not install any device drivers or virtual components into the operating system. SmartStor ZERO supports Windows® XP, Vista, Windows® 7, Mac OS X 10.5.2 and higher operating systems with one-touch configuration.

Accessing your digital content on the go has never been simpler. Setting up SmartStor ZERO for remote access from mobile devices and computers has never been easier. The embedded setup wizard will guide consumers through the setup process and auto-configure the router, allowing for seamless access to important data from anywhere on the planet.

SmartStor ZERO's Facebook integration makes managing and "uploading" pictures to Facebook a complete snap. Any picture stored on the SmartStor ZERO can be uploaded directly to Facebook within seconds. The Facebook Upload feature has been integrated into Promise's Web File Manager and is "easy" to locate, unlike existing products with similar features.

Using your home entertainment system has never been simpler

Today many homes and offices have wired coaxial, Ethernet or Wi-Fi networks. But by themselves, these networks don't facilitate the easy sharing of content between connected devices. The DLNA protocol enables consumers to locate, move and stream content between connected devices. The PROMISE SmartStor ZERO helps the consumer eliminate complicated setups when trying to connect multiple devices, enabling hassle-free connectivity and easy-to-use device management that will greatly enhance the consumer's entertainment experience. With SmartStor ZERO, consumers can revolutionize the way they find, send, store, get, play and print digital content. For example:

• Upload digital content from a mobile device to SmartStor ZERO;

• Download digital content from SmartStor ZERO to a mobile device;

• Display music Album Art in content lists using Windows 7 operating system;

• Display thumbnails for images and video using DLNA 1.5 digital media players and Windows 7 PCs;

• Utilize MU3 playlists and create DLNA playlists via NS4600 Media Center interface;

• Create playlists for playback in iTunes;

• View video streaming including protected content purchased from iTunes Store (Movies, TV shows and digital copies included with DVD & Blu-Ray) on Mac OS X.

With up to 4TB of storage, the SmartStor ZERO delivers an easy-to-use zero configuration, instantly accessible network attached storage and digital media server for data backup and media sharing in the digital home. Complemented by DLNA UPLOAD via Promise's upcoming Digital Media Controller software for mobile devices, consumers can easily transfer user-generated content directly to the SmartStor ZERO in a matter of seconds for instant viewing using DLNA TVs, PS3, Xbox 360 and Windows 7 PCs.

Pricing and Availability

Prices for the SmartStor ZERO NS2600 start at $279.00. Units will be available at major retail outlets in Q1, 2010.

Service

The offering is backed by PROMISE's two-year limited warranty.



Sanus’ ELM410 HDMI Cables Give You 180 Degrees of Freedom [Cables]

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Now this makes sense—an HDMI cable with a connector that can be positioned within a 180 degree radius. That will be a big space saver if you are trying to run cords in tight spaces.

Of course, the cables would have been more effective if both ends pivoted. For the life of me I can't understand why they chose to leave one end straight. At any rate, the Sanus cables will support HDMI 1.3b, 1080p and up to 16-bit color. They will also be available in 5 and 10-foot lengths. Pricing and availability information has not been released, but they should be available at major retailers like Best Buy in the near future. [Sanus via Slashgear]



The terrible beauty of chaotic starbirth | Bad Astronomy

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Orbiting our Milky Way galaxy like two bickering siblings are the Magellanic Clouds, galaxies in their own right, though far smaller than ours. The smaller of the two — named, shockingly, the Small Magellanic Cloud — is also the farther of the two, about 200,000 light years to the Larger cloud’s 180,000 or so. The SMC is loaded with gas and dust, and is actively churning out stars.

The Spitzer Space Telescope, which observes infrared light from astronomical sources, took this incredibly beautiful image of the SMC:

[Click to embiggen, including getting access to a huge 7800 x 7000 40Mb version.]

Remember, this is not a visible light image! In the picture, blue represents light at a wavelength of 3.6 microns, about 5 times longer than what the human eye can see. Green is 8 microns, and red 24. So what you see here as blue is really what we would think of as red stars if we saw them with our eyes. Green shows light from big organic molecules called PAHs, for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Red is light from stars deeply embedded in dust, and is where stars are busily being born.

All together, this image shows starbirth on a vast scale, thousands of light years across. And this may be a new phenomenon for the SMC: measurements of the elements in the stars there show that they have far fewer heavy elements (like oxygen, iron, and so on) than stars in the Milky Way, as little as 1/5th as abundant. Since these elements are created inside of stars over time, this indicates that stars in the SMC are on the whole younger than in the Milky Way.

Even though the two Clouds are the closest galaxies we can see — and you can spot them easily with the unaided eye in the southern hemisphere — there’s still a lot we don’t know about them. In fact, we’re not even sure if they are orbiting the Milky Way, or just passing by! Even over decades, measuring their actual motion across the sky is very difficult; their mind-numbing distance of quintillions of kilometers away shrinks any real motion into apparently microscopic amounts. It may be quite some time before this question is finally resolved.

Another image from Spitzer also shows a tail of gas streaming away from the SMC, material ripped out of the body of the galaxy itself by the gravity of the Milky Way. It’s possible that interactions with the Milky Way and the other Magellanic Cloud are what triggered the star formation in the SMC, too.

It’s rather convenient to have such a nice laboratory for dwarf galaxies and starbirth so close to us. That makes it easier to study, giving us access to really high resolution images like this one. And the bonus? They’re pretty, too.


Kepler Telescope Spies First Its 5 Exoplanets, Including “Styrofoam” World | 80beats

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KeplerNASA’s new eye in the sky has spotted the first handful of what it hopes will be a flood of new exoplanets. The Kepler telescope, launched last year with the express purpose of planet-hunting, has found its first five new worlds, with the results forthcoming in the journal Science this week. Just don’t get any ideas about living on any of them.

“One of the planets is amazingly light – like Styrofoam,” said William J. Borucki, the astronomer from NASA’s Ames Research Center…. “And all five simply glow,” he said, “they’re like looking into a blast furnace – but that’s simply no place to look for life” [San Francisco Chronicle]. The scalding-hot planets measure in excess of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than molten lava. These planets all orbit their stars in a hurry, taking between three and five days to make a circuit. Ground measurements confirmed Kepler’s findings.

Four of the five exoplanets—including Styrofoam world—are mysteriously light; they’re far less dense than Jupiter despite being 40 percent larger, as you can see in the chart. “This is accumulating evidence that low density is a common feature” among exoplanets, says planetary physicist David Stevenson of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who was not involved in the research. The problem is that no one has come up with a mechanism that could puff up an exoplanet that way [ScienceNOW Daily News].

Kepler’s first foray found more than just new planets. It also measured the light from 43,000 stars like our sun in its field of view and found two-thirds of them to be about as stable as the sun. That seemingly obscure observation suggests that the majority of stars potentially are as hospitable to life as Earth’s sun, assuming there was an Earth-like planet orbiting at the right distance from the star [Christian Science Monitor].

Related Content:
80beats: New Super-Earth: Hot, Watery, and Nearby
80beats: Meet the New Neighbors: Earth-Like Worlds Orbiting Nearby Stars
80beats: Don’t Pack Your Bags Yet—New Planet-Finder Hobbled By Electronic Glitch
80beats: Kepler Sends Postcards Home: It’s Beautiful Out Here
DISCOVER: How Long Until We Find a Second Earth?
Bad Astronomy: Kepler Works!

Image: NASA


VIA Epia-P820 Pico-ITX Board Is Perfect Base for Minuscule 64-Bit Home Theater Center [Ces 2010]

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I want to spend two weeks working with the new fan-less, VIA EPIA-P820 pico-ITX board—with full 64-bit support—and matching VIA Amos-3001 chassis to create a full HD home theater in my car. Thankfully, I don't have a car.

But it's a perfect base for a custom home theater in any case. The board has a 1.2GHz U2500 VIA Nano processor with 2GB of DDR2 system memory, a VIA VX855 Media System Processor—which can decode any 1080p codec you can throw at it—and a VIA Chrome9™ HCM 3D integrated graphics core with full DirectX 9.0 support.

The best thing is that this 10 x 7.2-centimeter board fits perfectly in the aluminum VIA Amos-3001 chassis, alongside a I/O daughter board with HDMI, VGA, Gigabit LAN and two USB 2.0 ports. The whole packaged is capable of outputting DTS audio through S/PDIF, and connect to an additional four USB ports, IDE, and Serial ATA.



Best Buy’s Mac Optimization Makes Its Normal Optimizations Seem Downright Reasonable [Scams]

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Yesterday, I told you about a new Consumerist investigation into the huge ripoffy nature of Best Buy's computer optimizations. But hoo boy, $40 to enter a username into a new Mac? That's tough to justify.

Just what do you get when you give the Geek Squad $40 to optimize your new MacBook Pro?

As even a computer novice might expect, "Mac optimization" is useless. One supposed benefit is putting the user's name on the computer, according to Best Buy representatives I spoke to. Presumably, anyone who is buying a computer knows how to type in his or her own name, or follow the prompts to do it. Another supposed benefit: checking the Mac's network connection. This has no value because it is done in the store, while the buyer will use the Mac with a different network at home. Yet a third step involves loading the Geek Squad's own proprietary software on the computer to scan drives-drives that have never been used and so don't need to be scanned for trouble. An anti-virus program is also part of the mix, which is an insult to the virus resistance of Macs. "There's nothing of that sort that any brand-new PC needs, and Macs less so," Gottheil said. "Apple requires far less configuration." Best Buy's hard sell on "optimization" is like peddling mythic unicorns based on the value of their horsepower.

If there's a more transparent retail scam aimed at vacuuming money out of the wallets of old and naive people, I've never heard of it. This is downright shameful. [The Big Money]



“The Space Entrepreneur” Named by Aviation Week Magazine As Its 2009 Person of the Year

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Popular Science January 2010

Commercial spaceflight is featured in this week’s cover story of Aviation Week and Space Technology, which has selected “The Space Entrepreneur” as its 2009 Person of the Year.

“Space entrepreneurs had a big influence on aerospace in 2009,” write Aviation Week editors Frank Morring and Guy Norris, “although it does not begin to compare with the impact they are likely to have in years to come.”

“After receiving more than $1 billion in private capital, NASA has recently awarded space entrepreneurs with multi-billion dollar contracts for transporting cargo to the International Space Station, and may rely on them to transport astronauts once the space shuttle fleet is retired,” Aviation Week noted in a press release accompanying the cover story.

“We’re at the beginning of a new era in access to space… an era of commercial human spaceflight,” added former astronaut Tom Henricks, president of Aviation Week, in the press release. “It’s exciting that entrepreneurs are pursuing opportunities in space. Only about five hundred people have been to space in the past half century. AVIATION WEEK is proud to recognize these innovative individuals for their enormous contributions to making space accessible to many more in the near future.”

The Aviation Week cover image features Masten Space Systems’ CEO, Dave Masten, whose company recently won $1.15 million in the NASA Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X PRIZE Challenge for successful flights of its vertical-takeoff vertical-landing vehicles.

(The cover story and accompanying press release are available online from Aviation Week.)

Image credit: Aviation Week and Space Technology

Marvell’s ARMADA Mobile Chips to Go 1Ghz/1080p [CPUs]

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Marvell's ARMADA chips hope to power everything from Blu-ray players to ebooks to smartbooks to digital picture frames, but the most interesting are the 600 series smartphone chips with a strong claimed 3d performance.

Says Sascha Segan:

According to a Marvell press release, the ARMADA 610 can render 45 million 3D triangles per second and control four displays at 2k x 2k pixel resolution each. That makes it more powerful than the PowerVR SGX 530 core used in the Motorola Droid and the Qualcomm graphics core in the QSD8250 Snapdragon, which handle 14m and 22m triangles respectively.

Noted.

[Anand via PCMag]



Refocusing | Cosmic Variance

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Well, I’ve spent quite a bit of time away from the blog recently, feeling rather overwhelmed as a number of responsibilities accumulated over the last hectic year finally caught up with me. But, for now at least, things seem to be in check and I’m hoping to get a little more writing done.

The last few months of the year were quite a ride. For example,

  • I started teaching again (after a sabbatical at Cornell, and then a one semester leave to help me settle in at Penn), and very much enjoyed introducing the complexities (no pun intended) of contour integration, asymptotic methods, Sturm-Liouville theory, etc. to a whole new batch of beginning graduate students at a whole new institution.
  • The first (albeit limited) renovations were completed as part of the Center for Particle Cosmology, and helping oversee these, as well as planning for much larger future renovations took up a huge part of the Fall semester. In the end though, this should be well worth it, with a new and highly-functional space for us to work and collaborate in.
  • I stared doing significant service again; organizing departmental colloquia and sitting on our graduate admissions committee. Plus some new editorial work
  • I went to Australia, to speak at the COSPA-09 meeting in Melbourne (if you look carefully you’ll see both Sean and me in the group picture on the main page.) This was my third visit to Melbourne, and once again I was struck by what a liveable and lovely city it is. The conference was great fun, and I saw a number of talks that gave me something to think about back in Philly.
  • I finished some papers.
  • We ran an intense and, I thought, successful workshop – New Horizons in Particle Cosmology – to inaugurate the Center for Particle Cosmology. This involved some of the biggest names in our field, and included a very well-attended public lecture by Paul Steinhardt. My colleague Justin Khoury deserves considerable praise for taking on most of the organizational work of the conference and lecture.

Right now I’m gearing up for next week’s beginning of my graduate General Relativity class, which is my absolute favorite subject to teach. I’m also preparing for quite a bit more travel this year, although not for a few weeks at least. But most importantly, of course, I’m hard at work on a number of projects that I hope will come to fruition in the pretty near future.

So this post is just intended to get back into the swing of things. I’ll leave you with an interesting new link. NPR is entering the science blogging field with a good-looking new blog featuring, among others, science writer and friend-of-the-blog, K.C. Cole, and former guest contributor, physicist Marcelo Gleiser. Their blog is called 13.7 (for reasons you might try guessing before checking on) and I hope you’ll check them out – we wish them all the best.


24-Hour 3D Television Channel Coming in 2011 [Ces2010]

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If ESPN, Discovery, Imax, and Sony have it their way, 3D television may actually go from novelty to reality in 2011. I can't wait for the sensory overload of white sharks trying to eat the pants out of me.

scovery, Imax, and Sony are expected to announce the channel—which will feature a mix of 3D content starting in 2011—at CES. It will be 24 hours, which make it different from the ESPN 3D network, which will only operate when they have any sports event filmed in 3D. [NYT and The Live Feed]