Mars rover Opprotunity suffering from 'amnesia' says NASA

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Researchers at NASA are working to improve the memory of the Mars exploration rover Opportunity after a series of glitches in recent weeks led to what officials are describing as "amnesia" within the its memory banks.

The rover relies on orbital passes from the Mars Odyssey satellite to relay communications and commands to and from NASA, but when a pass does not occur between the rover's power cycles -- a relatively frequent occurrence -- the rover fails to transfer information from its temporary RAM to its permanent flash memory. The rover's repeated attempts and fails to save data to the flash memory cause it to it reboot, essentially erasing its last set of commands received.

"Volatile memory is like the traditional RAM you have in your computer; non-volatile memory uses flash memory technology," Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told Discovery News.

"So now we're having these events we call 'amnesia,' which is the rover trying to use the flash memory, but it wasn't able to, so instead it uses the RAM ... it stores telemetry data in that volatile memory, but when the rover goes to sleep and wakes up again, all (the data) is gone. So that's why we call it amnesia -- it forgets what it has done."

Opportunity has been working without flash memory since earlier in December, when NASA first reported the memory problems.

"While we're operating Opportunity in that mode, we are also working on an approach to make the flash memory usable again," Callas said at the time.

"We will be sure to give this approach exhaustive reviews before implementing those changes on the rover."

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Mars rover Opprotunity suffering from 'amnesia' says NASA

A cup from the river of life

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At the end of every year, I drop a dented dipper into the river of life and look at the lives of 10 people from the Lansing area who died in the past year. They are not all famous or accomplished, but they are worth remembering.

FLOYD D. "BUBBY" EATON SR.

1930-2014

In the late 1950s, Floyd D. Eaton started work at Atlas Drop Forge, a pillar of mid- 20th-century Lansing industry and a quick walk from Eaton's downtown Lansing house. Two years later, both of his hands were crushed in a stamping press.

Eaton switched gears and went to work for Lansing's Sanitation Department, rising through the ranks from sanitation worker to supervisor. To liven up monotonous runs, workers stacked as many galvanized steel garbage cans as they could balance on their hips and carried them to the truck. He was so good at it he developed a passion for weightlifting that lasted the rest of his life.

At age 39, in 1968-69, he was named Mr. Michigan.

Eaton died Nov. 22 at 84.

"His laugh was infectious. People gravitated to him," Eaton's son, Mujahid Abdul Hameed, said. "He didn't know any strangers."

Born in Lansing, Eaton was an athlete from his swimming and diving days at West Junior High. He was a three-time wrestling champion at Sexton High and the only African- American on the wrestling team.

Hameed recalled that Sexton's head wrestling coach, Iggy Conrad, would tell him to lose a match, "depending on where they were playing," because the opponents wouldn't tolerate losing to an African-American wrestler. Eaton politely declined to take any dives.

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A cup from the river of life

Top 4 tech habits you need to break right now

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Get some peace of mind by breaking some bad habits and developing some good ones along the way.

It's a brand new year, so why not start it off right by ditching the shackles of old habits and trying some new things to make your tech life easier? We know that old habits die hard and that's why we've also included links to show you how to handle these common practices

Using the same password on multiple sites is trouble because if any one of those sites is hacked, that information could be used against you in many different places. Yes, it's inconvenient to have multiple passwords if you are relying only on your memory. That's why it's a good idea to give a password manager like LastPass a chance. If you've never tried a password manager, it can store your usernames and passwords for you, it can generate new passwords for you, and is accessible online. Here's our tutorial on how to use LastPass if you're up for a change.

I'll never forget the panic of almost losing hundreds of photos of my newborn because I didn't regularly sync my phone to my PC. Nowadays, that is a simple problem to overcome. If your phone is your primary camera (like it is for many), do yourself a favor and download an app that will automatically backup your photos and videos to the cloud.

There are plenty of options out there. If you like Google, you can use either Google+ on iOS or the Photos app on Android to set up auto backup. Dropbox also offers the same functionality if you turn on the camera upload option. If you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, you get unlimited storage of your photos as well with the Amazon Cloud Drive app.

It's easy to visit Facebook, see what your friends are up to, and post your own status updates. However, when was the last time you took a look to see what content you were posting and who could see it? Diving into those Facebook settings can seem like a nightmare, but we've got a great article on how to secure your Facebook account that you should take a look at.

We are all fans of running online video on our computers, but sometimes Flash can cause your computers fans to spin up to try to cool down your PC. You should give up having Flash running all the time. If you're on Google Chrome, try out FlashControl. If you're on Firefox, try out FlashBlock. By default, these plugins will not load Flash content on a page unless you put a site on a whitelist or if you click the Flash item to load it. You'd be surprised how much battery life you can save if you turn off Flash on a number of sites. Be warned that the web might look very different to you at first, but it's definitely worth it. If you want to squeeze more battery life out of your laptop or phones, check out our guide on battery life and how to preserve it.

If you're like the majority of people who use Android smartphones, you may just enjoy all the great apps on your phone. But, did you know that you can change the entire way your phone presents your apps and widgets? Manufacturers like Samsung, HTC and LG all put their spin on Android with their own customizations. However, you can modify your phone by trying any number of launchers. If you've never heard of a launcher, here's everything you need to know about Android launchers. Installing one is as easy as installing any other app and you can always go back to your phone's default if you so choose.

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Top 4 tech habits you need to break right now

8 easy digital resolutions for a happy, high-tech 2015

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Welcome to 2015: A brand new year and a great time for a fresh start. Instead of shooting for nebulous, unrealistic goals in the New Year, start off 2015 with vows to improve your digital life. (You werent really going to go to the gym every day or be nicer to your siblings anyway.)

Most of the suggestions below arent hard to achieve and some are even the set-it-and-forget-it kinds of resolutions. But you, your PC, and your data will be much better off once youve hit these technological high points.

Conventional wisdom says you should have three copies of your data: the "original" on your PC, a backup at home, and a backup off-site.

You should already be backing up your PCs at home with an external hard drive, but what about the third backup? Its better to be safe than sorry if the worst befalls your home, like a robbery or fire.

The easiest way to get an off-site backup is to useonline backup services likeBackblaze, Carbonite, or CrashPlan. Were not talking about syncing-focused cloud storage solutions like Dropbox or OneDrive here. Pure online backup services generally dont offer sync (SpiderOak excluded) and are usually much cheaper than their cloud storage counterparts. Backblaze, the service I currently use, charges you $50 a year to back up one PC plus any connected drives.

Thats small price to pay for peace of mind about your family photos, music, videos, and documents. Consider choosing a service that gives you the option to encrypt your data without providing the service itself a copy of the key (your encryption password). It does take a little more responsibility, because if you forget your password youll need to upload your data to the cloud all over againthe backup service wont be able to descramble everything for you. But in this age of governmental snooping, it's better to keep your personal data as protected as possible.

This is obviously NOT one of the leaked Jennifer Lawrence pictures, because she's wearing clothes.

In late August, highly personal photos of celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence and Kirsten Dunst surfaced online after falling into the hands of hackers who'd pilfered them from services such as iCloud. The hack was yet another reminder that you need to be careful about what you put online.

No, it's not fair to blame the victim in cases like these, but devastating hacks of personal data aren't going away anytime soon. So the best way to avoid any serious damage is to avoid putting anything online that you might regret being seen by others.

Dont forget that any photos you take with your phone may automatically be backed up to a cloud storage service depending on how youve configured your settingsthat how the actresses compromising pictures wound up on the Internet in the first place. The epic Sony Pictures hack can teach us a lot about protecting our email, including what not to say in digital messages. Finally, be sure to perform these five privacy fixes on Facebook pronto.

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8 easy digital resolutions for a happy, high-tech 2015

QiGong Exercise for Vitality and Health: Natural Medicine for Liver Problems (Revised Edition) – Video

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QiGong Exercise for Vitality and Health: Natural Medicine for Liver Problems (Revised Edition)
Ever had a chance to practice chi gong as a form of meditation but somehow you have no idea how it affects you? What if you can do an exercise that could not only benefit you as a person but...

By: Ocean Tantric Lama

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QiGong Exercise for Vitality and Health: Natural Medicine for Liver Problems (Revised Edition) - Video

Yoga helps teens with depression, self-worth and faith

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Researchers from Harvard Medical School conducted a study on high school students. Some of the students did a 10-week yoga PE class, and some did a regular PE class. The yoga class included meditation along with yoga poses. At the beginning of the study, all the students took a number of psychological tests for things like mood problems, anxiety and anger expression.

The researchers found teens who did not do yoga during their PE classes scored higher for mood problems or anxiety, while those who did do yoga scored lower on these tests, or their scores remained the same. Teens who didn't do yoga reported more negative emotions, while the teens who did do yoga reported fewer negative emotions.

Experience, not a formal study, had already proven to me benefits of yoga for teens. I joyfully agreed when a Utah County private school, Liahona Preparatory Academy asked if I would teach a semester of yoga. Teaching yoga along with 12 spiritual thought patterns, with a God focus, can happen at a private school. The curriculum reinforced principles of faith while also using yoga poses. By combining religious concepts, breathing exercises and yoga poses -- students experienced balanced learning.

The first week of class was magical! The library transformed into one of the most beautiful yoga spaces because of the open hearts of the students. Ninety percent of the students had never done any yoga but they were brave and willing to learn anyways.

Every week of the semester I saw transformations in these amazing teens. They became comfortable with Warrior 1 and started to long for longer savasanas. Ujiah breath, aka Darth Vader breathing, filled the air as we talked about self-worth, prayer and forgiveness. Learning thought patterns that focused on God and guiding students into down dog. When the pressures of life became overwhelming the teens would move and then we prayed. Over time, both students and teacher, were transformed.

The semester final was a celebration. As a teacher I watched as the students moved through their sun salutations with no cueing from me. Students shared vulnerable answers on their written final about how anger and self-hatred has departed since they have started yoga.

One student shared how his anxiety has disappeared because he is trusting God's love more than he is focusing on his mistakes. One student's back pain has now disappeared and he looks forward to yoga class more than any other class at school.

Why teach teens to do yoga?

How do spiritual thought patterns help eliminate adolescent anxiety?

One tender answer came from a brave, beautiful student in my yoga class. This young woman discovered that she now sees her body as a gift. She now recognizes how damaging her critical attitude had become. Spiritual thought patterns helped her see that her body is a stewardship to be cared for. Bodies aren't objects to hurt. Yoga is the new mirror she sees her true self in.

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Seven to Watch: Hospital epidemiologist led Ebola preparation for Carolinas HealthCare System

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It was about 3 a.m. July 30 when Dr. Katie Passaretti got the call from a concerned physician in the emergency room at Carolinas Medical Center. A patient with a fever, who had traveled from Liberia, could be infected with the Ebola virus.

As medical director for infection prevention at Carolinas HealthCare System, Passaretti knew the probability was low. There had never been a case of Ebola in the United States. But with the outbreak raging in West Africa and the ease of international travel, she knew it was possible and serious.

After making sure the patient was isolated and after asking more questions, she rushed to the hospital for an adrenaline-filled day. It was the first of many as she helped prepare the hospital system for the potential of caring for someone with the highly contagious, often deadly viral infection.

That patient turned out to have malaria instead of Ebola, but the incident got Passaretti and her colleagues focused on improving infection prevention protocols almost two months before most other U.S. hospitals. Many waited until late September, when Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan arrived in Dallas, where he transmitted his infection to two hospital nurses. Duncan died Oct. 8, but the nurses recovered.

We had the first real rule-out in the country, said Passaretti, 38, both an internist and an epidemiologist. It definitely ramped us up earlier on than a lot of facilities. The system worked just like it was supposed to. The right things happened, and nobody was at risk.

That Carolinas HealthCares system worked well is, in part, because of Passaretti, who has been on the job since April 2011, coordinating infection prevention for 14 Charlotte-area hospitals.

After that July case, Dr. Jim Hunter, chief medical officer for Carolinas HealthCare, said he got an outpouring of feedback from employees saying were glad Dr. Passaretti was here. We know that we can rely on what shes saying.

When he saw Passarettis interviews on national news, Hunter was proud of how she described the situation. Its her ability to connect, explain and communicate that sets her apart, Hunter said. She can sit with any scientist at the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and then she can turn around and talk to a very different audience and make it very digestible.

Dr. Scott Furney, chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at Carolinas HealthCare, said Passaretti is one of the rare physicians with both deep medical knowledge and great communication skills.

Her leadership in disseminating information to doctors and hospital employees about Ebola resulted in the best coordinated campaign I have ever seen, Furney said. That included websites, printed fliers and videos to teach employees how to screen patients by phone or in person and how to put on and take off protective gear. Im sure it was a group effort. But Katie is the content expert. She had to be driving much of that process, he said.

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Seven to Watch: Hospital epidemiologist led Ebola preparation for Carolinas HealthCare System