Mars Blueberries: Traces of Life That Once Called the Red Planet Home? | NASA’s Unexplained Files – Video

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Mars Blueberries: Traces of Life That Once Called the Red Planet Home? | NASA #39;s Unexplained Files
In January 2004, all eyes were on NASA #39;s Opportunity rover as it descended onto Mars. Once the rover began transmitting data, scientists encountered geology ...

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Mars Blueberries: Traces of Life That Once Called the Red Planet Home? | NASA's Unexplained Files - Video

NASA Explains Martian Flash, and It's Not What You Think

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A leader of NASA's Mars Curiosity rover team has offered a couple of explanations for an anomalous bright spot that showed up on pictures from the Red Planet but they're not the conventional explanations.

Let's get this straight first: It's not an alien spotlight, according to Justin Maki, an imaging scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who is the lead for Curiosity's engineering cameras. Maki isn't giving any weight to the not-completely-serious claims that are being bandied about by UFO websites.

At the same time, Maki isn't immediately dismissing the phenomenon as a double-shot of cosmic rays or data dropouts. In his view, that spot of light could have entered Curiosity's right-hand navigation camera, even though there's no sign of the spot in the stereo imagery from the left-hand camera.

Maki and his colleagues think it could be a well-placed flash of reflected sunlight, or light shining through a chink in Curiosity's camera housing. Here's his explanation, passed along via email:

"Bright spots appear in single images taken by the Navigation Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on April 2 and April 3. Each is in an image taken by this stereo camera's right-eye camera [with links to the April 3 and April 2 pictures] but not in images taken within a second of each of those by the left-eye camera [again, with links to April 3 and April 2]. In the two right-eye images, the spot is in different locations of the image frame and, in both cases, at the ground surface level in front of a crater rim on the horizon.

"One possibility is that the light is the glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun. When these images were taken each day, the sun was in the same direction as the bright spot, west-northwest from the rover, and relatively low in the sky. The rover science team is also looking at the possibility that the bright spots could be sunlight reaching the camera's CCD directly through a vent hole in the camera housing, which has happened previously on other cameras on Curiosity and other Mars rovers when the geometry of the incoming sunlight relative to the camera is precisely aligned.

"We think it's either a vent-hole light leak or a glinty rock."

NASA spokesman Guy Webster told NBC News that both pictures were taken during the Martian afternoon. He said a member of the rover team is checking for other examples of light leaks and Martian sunglint.

Even if the flash is the glint from a shiny rock, the crater's rim looks far enough away that Curiosity's course is unlikely to be changed to investigate. Unless, of course, it turns out to be a Martian flashing a mirror.

A bright spot shows up in Curiosity's right-hand navigation camera image from April 2.

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NASA Explains Martian Flash, and It's Not What You Think

NASA Curiosity rover captures image of 'white light' in distance

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Life on Mars? How about light on Mars? Actually, how about neither?

NASA's Curiosity rover snapped an image of what appears to be a bright white light shining on the planet's horizon. The speculation surrounding the photo was covered by many outlets, including NBC News and the Houston Chronicle.

So what is it? Is it a UFO? It's a UFO, right? Come on, say it's a UFO.

Well, no. Yahoo News asked NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory what was up. In an email, Justin Maki, an imaging scientist there and the lead for the Curiosity's engineering cameras, explained that the "bright spots" appear in images taken by the stereo camera's right-eye camera, but not the left.

"In the two right-eye images, the spot is in different locations of the image frame and, in both cases, at the ground surface level in front of a crater rim on the horizon."

"One possibility is that the light is the glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun. When these images were taken each day, the sun was in the same direction as the bright spot, west-northwest from the rover, and relatively low in the sky. The rover science team is also looking at the possibility that the bright spots could be sunlight reaching the camera's CCD directly through a vent hole in the camera housing, which has happened previously on other cameras on Curiosity and other Mars rovers when the geometry of the incoming sunlight relative to the camera is precisely aligned. We think it's either a vent-hole light leak or a glinty rock."

Doug Ellison, who also works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, offered his opinion on Twitter. His theory: a "cosmic ray hit."

Phil Plait of Slate's Bad Astronomer blog agrees with Ellison. He explains that cosmic rays "are charged subatomic particles (like protons, electrons and so on) zipping around in space." They don't show up on Earth as our atmosphere absorbs them, but "if you put a telescope in space, they are bombarded by these little beasties."

Bottom line experts aren't sure what the "light" is yet. But we can be confident it isn't E.T.

The photo taken by NASA's Mars Curiosity rover (NASA)

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NASA Curiosity rover captures image of 'white light' in distance

NASA chief faces questions about travel

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - The chairman of a House Appropriations subcommittee probed NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on Tuesday morning citing apparent massive overuse of premium first- and business-class air travel upgrades for agency employees, including trips first publicized by Scripps News nearly a month ago.

I dont travel first class, Bolden told the committee.

Among the trips cited by Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., was a $14,773 flight NASA reported booking for Ames Research Center Director Simon Pete Worden to travel first class from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco in 2011.

When Scripps News first raised questions about the trip, NASA officials said its records were incorrect and the trip never happened. Worden told Scripps News it did.

Wolf also asked why Bolden charged taxpayers $1,641 for a one-way first-class flight from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles in June 2010. NASA records say the average coach fare for the flight is less than $200.

Bolden said he often uses frequent flier miles to upgrade at no cost. He was unable to explain why the costlier fares were reported in NASA records, and said he would get answers.

I cant help how its accounted for, said Bolden, who was testifying about NASAs 2015 budget request before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies. We are looking into it. The IG (inspector general) is looking into it.

Wolf, who chairs the subcommittee, cited serious problems with some of the space agencys fiscal decisions, including travel spending reported in annual disclosures to the General Services Administration. He urged more stringent belt-tightening and oversight.

If NASA is going to continue to receive the support of Congress, it absolutely must do a better job, Wolf said. The criticism came as Bolden answered questions about the agencys $17.46 billion budget request.

NASA approved one-way premium upgrades that it reported cost from $3,000 to more than $10,000 apiece on 515 occasions over four years, Scripps reported after reviewing agency records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

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NASA chief faces questions about travel

Sierra: The Next Generation Biosensor – Nanotechnology Engineering – Video

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Sierra: The Next Generation Biosensor - Nanotechnology Engineering
Team members: Alison Lee, Chelsea Marr, Krishna Iyer This innovative sensor combines fibre optics and LEDs with gold nanoparticles to create a novel biosensor. The sensor uses the interaction...

By: Waterloo Engineering

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Sierra: The Next Generation Biosensor - Nanotechnology Engineering - Video

Scientists in Singapore Develop Novel Ultra-Fast Electrical Circuits Using Light-Generated Tunneling Currents

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Newswise Assistant Professor Christian A. Nijhuis of the Department of Chemistry at the National University of Singapores (NUS) Faculty of Science, in collaboration with researchers from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), namely Dr Bai Ping of the Institute of High Performance Computing and Dr Michel Bosman of the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, has successfully designed and fabricated electrical circuits that can operate at hundreds of terahertz frequencies, which is tens of thousands times faster than todays state-of-the-art microprocessors.

This novel invention uses a new physical process called quantum plasmonic tunnelling. By changing the molecules in the molecular electronic device, the frequency of the circuits can be altered in hundreds of terahertz regime. The new circuits can potentially be used to construct ultra-fast computers or single molecule detectors in the future, and open up new possibilities in nano-electronic devices. The study is funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and A*STAR and results of the research were first published in prestigious scientific journal Science on 28 March 2014.

The quest to be super-small and super-fast

Light is used as an information carrier and transmitted in optical fibre cables. Photonic elements are large but they operate at extremely high frequencies of 100 terahertz about 10,000 times faster than the desktop computer. But current state-of-the-art nano-electronic devices operate at length scales that are much smaller, making it very difficult to combine the ultra-fast properties of photonic elements with nano-scale electronics.

Scientists have long known that light can interact with certain metals and can be captured in the form of plasmons, which are collective, ultra-fast oscillations of electrons that can be manipulated at the nano-scale. The so-called quantum plasmon modes have been theoretically predicted to occur at atomic length scales. However, current state-of-the-art fabrication techniques can only reach length scales that are about five nanometre larger, therefore quantum-plasmon effects have been difficult to investigate.

In this landmark study, the research team demonstrated that quantum-plasmonics is possible at length scales that are useful for real applications. Researchers successfully fabricated an element of a molecular electronic circuit using two plasmonic resonators, which are structures that can capture light in the form of plasmons, bridged by a layer of molecules that is exactly one molecule thick. The layer of molecules switches on the quantum plasmonic tunneling effects, enabling the circuits to operate at terahertz frequencies.

Dr Bosman used an advanced electron microscopy technique to visualise and measure the opto-electronic properties of these structures with nanometer resolution. The measurements revealed the existence of the quantum plasmon mode and that its speed could be controlled by varying the molecular properties of the devices.

By performing quantum-corrected simulations, Dr Bai confirmed that the quantum plasmonic properties could be controlled in the molecular electronic devices at frequencies 10,000 times faster than current processors.

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Scientists in Singapore Develop Novel Ultra-Fast Electrical Circuits Using Light-Generated Tunneling Currents

MediaFire Takes Its Desktop Apps Out Of Beta, Removes File Size Restrictions

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MediaFire, the popular online file storage and image hosting site, today announced that its desktop apps for Windows and OS X are now out of beta. The integration looks similar to what Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive do in that they seamlessly integrate themselves into the operating systems file managers and save dialogs.

Using the desktop apps, MediaFire allows desktop uses to quickly upload their images and instantly share them with others. As part of this update, the service now allows users to follow files and track new files shared by users automatically. It alsoessentially lifted its file upload restrictions and both free and paid users can now upload files up to 20 gigabytes in size. Its also launching 1 terabyte storage plans. For a limited time, those will cost $2.50 per month or $24.99 per year. Thats significantly cheaper than Googles new plans for Drive, but the functionality of MediaFire is obviously also far more limited that of Drive. If youre just looking for online storage, though, this may be worth a closer look.

For developers, the company is announcing a set of new APIs that will help them integrate the service with their own applications.

In the next few weeks, MediaFire will also launch new native apps for iPad and Android. The company isnt releasing all that much information about these apps yet, but they will include automatic photo syncing from Android devices.

All of this clearly amounts to an attempt by MediaFire to position itself as a more fully-featured online storage service. In general, the service doesnt quite get the attention that some of its competitors get, but it does have a very large user base. With all of the larger players now making a very aggressive push to compete with Dropbox and similar services, it makes sense for MediaFire to also try to gain a bit more mind share as well.

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MediaFire Takes Its Desktop Apps Out Of Beta, Removes File Size Restrictions