May 15, 2008
The wheels continue to turn on Europe’s billion-euro project to put a robotic rover on the surface of the Red Planet.
Demonstrators are a vital step before building the real thing
Engineers working towards the flagship ExoMars mission have unveiled a sophisticated new vehicle prototype.
The demonstrator will test a possible suspension and locomotion set-up to be built into the final rover design.
ExoMars, which has yet to receive final sign-off from space ministers, is scheduled to leave Earth in 2013 and land on the fourth planet a year later.
It will carry a suite of instruments across the Martian landscape, looking for signs of past or present life.
The new prototype, developed by the Canadian MDA Corporation, will help engineers understand how the real rover will behave when it moves through the rocky terrain.
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May 15, 2008
The next generation of the Flash Player is here. Adobe has released a beta version of Flash Player 10, which promises better performance, improved text handling, custom photo effects filters and native 3D animations. It’s available as a free download at the Adobe Labs website.
Adobe Flash is the most widely-used presentation technology for video, audio and animated user interfaces on the web. The current version of Flash Player is installed on roughly 95% of the world’s internet-connected PCs. It also runs on a number of phones and mobile devices, though the percentage of such Flash-capable hand-helds is much smaller. In an effort to speed the adoption of Flash across mobile devices, Adobe recently lifted many of the licensing requirements necessary to develop for the platform.
As Tom Barclay, senior product marketing manager for Adobe’s Platform Business Unit told Wired.com in a telephone interview, many of Flash Player 10’s improvements are based on feedback the team has received from the development community. He says that most of the features in this release were included in direct response to their demands. By aiming to transcend specific limitations within the previous versions of the Flash player, Barclay hopes to help developers push the envelope and extend their online applications even further than was previously capable.
Once piece of welcome news is that Adobe is releasing the Flash Player 10 beta for all major platforms — Windows, Mac and Linux. Adobe has even upped the Linux ante with a new installer specially tailored for Ubuntu users. Barclay says that Adobe considers Linux a major platform and will continue to make all Flash releases simultaneous across platforms.
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May 15, 2008
Neil Diamond doesn’t mess with success. That’s why he "never doubted" he’d work again with producer Rick Rubin, who steered their 2005 collaboration, "12 Songs," to a No. 4 debut on the Billboard 200, Diamond’s best since "The Jazz Singer" in 1982. The album has sold 571,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Indeed, Diamond, 67, says he and Rubin began working on "Home Before Dark," which arrived May 6 via Columbia, "within weeks after ‘12 Songs’ was finished." And once again, their hard work has paid off, as Diamond debuts this week at No. 1 on The Billboard 200, the first chart-topper of his career.
Diamond worked in the studio with Rubin and an improvisationally leaning band featuring guitarists Mike Campbell, Matt Sweeney and Smokey Hormel and keyboardist Benmont Tench. Dixie Chicks vocalist Natalie Maines chipped in on "Another Day (That Time Forgot)," Diamond’s first major duet with a female voice since "You Don’t Bring Me Flowers" with Barbra Streisand in 1978.
Neil Diamond
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May 15, 2008
CANNES (Hollywood Reporter) - Tommy Lee Jones is taking on the work of Ernest Hemingway, signing on to adapt, direct, produce and star in the writer’s posthumously published novel "Islands in the Stream."
Morgan Freeman and John Goodman also are in discussions to board the film, which follows a 1977 version starring George C. Scott.
"Islands" centers on the various life stages of a reclusive male painter named Thomas Hudson before, during and after World War II, after he moves to the Bahamas. Like many Hemingway characters, Hudson, who in the tale has a stint working for the U.S. Navy and also endures a series of family tragedies, leads a complicated emotional life that he hides behind a stony exterior.
Tommy Lee Jones, best actor Oscar nominee for "In the Valley of Elah" arrives at the 80th annual Academy Awards in Hollywood, February 24, 2008.
REUTERS/Carlos Barria
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May 15, 2008
"Follow the water" has been NASA’s mantra as it has explored Mars for signs of present or past life. It will be no different later this month when the Phoenix Mars Lander touches down on the Red Planet for what researchers hope will be their closest encounter yet with extraterrestrial water.
Powered by solar panels, Phoenix is set to take a three-month tour of the plains near the north pole of Mars, enduring surface temperatures from –100 to –28 degrees Fahrenheit (–73 to –33 degrees Celsius). The craft is designed to dig into the cementlike layer of ice that researchers believe lies buried a few inches below the surface in the planet’s polar regions, scanning for signs of past liquid water and organic compounds, the carbon-rich molecules that make life on Earth possible.
If all goes according to plan, "Phoenix will touch water for the first time" on Mars, Doug McCuistion, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, said at a press conference this week at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Assuming, that is, it survives entry. Only five of 13 attempts to land on Mars have succeeded. (Although five of six U.S. probes have made it.) The $420-million Phoenix is the sibling mission of the doomed Mars Polar Lander (MPL), which crashed during landing in 1999.
NASA’S PHOENIX Mars Lander is depicted moments before its scheduled touchdown on May 25 in this artist’s representation.
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May 15, 2008
The most attractive male birds attract more females and as a result are most successful in terms of reproduction. This is the starting point of many studies looking for factors that influence sexual selection in birds. However, is it reasonable to assume that birds see what we see? In a study published in the latest issue of American Naturalist, Uppsala researchers show that our human vision is not an adequate instrument.
Is it reasonable to assume that birds, such as this peacock, see exactly the same bright colors that we see? A new study shows that our human vision is not an adequate instrument. (Credit: iStockphoto/Dariusz Lewandowski)
"The results mean that many studies on sexual selection may need to be re-evaluated," says Anders Odeen, research assistant at the Department of Animal Ecology at Uppsala University, who carried out this study with his colleague Olle Håstad.
The significance of birds’ plumage, both in terms of richness of colour and particular signals, has been shown to be a major factor in birds’ choice of partner. In order to assess the colours of birds, everything from binoculars to RGB image analyses are used. However, most studies are based on the hypothesis that human colour vision can be used to assess what birds see.
"It’s a bit like a colour blind person describing the colours of clothes — it’s often quite accurate but sometimes it can go badly wrong."
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May 15, 2008
Of the current global environmental problems, the excessive release of carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels and the related global warming is one of the most pressing. In an essay in the journal ChemSusChem , Fritz Scholz and Ulrich Hasse from the University of Greifswald introduce a possible approach to a solution: deliberately planted forests bind the CO2 through photosynthesis and are then removed from the global CO2 cycle by burial. "For the first time, humankind will give something back to nature that we have taken away before," says Scholz.
"Whereas other environmental problems can, at least in principle, be solved by the appropriate modern technology," reports Scholz, "there are no realistic solutions for the CO2 problem." At present, a daunting 32 gigatons of CO2 are released into the atmosphere every year. Previous proposals to pump the CO2 into the oceans are not practicable or are ecologically problematic.
The only possible way to bind sufficiently large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere is photosynthesis. However, the resulting biomass cannot be burned or composted, because this would release the bound CO2. The trick will be to make the biomass "disappear". Scholz recommends planting forests whose wood will subsequently be buried. Possible burial sites include open brown coal pits or other surface mines. These should be filled with wood and covered with soil. Cut off from the air in this manner, the wood would not change, even over long periods. It could in principle be dug up in the future and used.
The global CO2 problem can only be solved by the introduction of a permanent carbon sink based on using natural photosynthesis. In the wood growth and burial process, humans produce biomass, especially wood, for it to be later removed from the global carbon cycle by burial under anaerobic conditions (e.g. on the bottom of emptied open pits). Moreover, the buried wood is a deposited good and potentially available for future use. (Credit: Copyright Wiley-VCH 2008)
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May 15, 2008
Washington, D.C.–Curved features on Jupiter’s moon Europa may indicate that its poles have wandered by almost 90°, report scientists from the Carnegie Institution, Lunar and Planetary Institute, and University of California, Santa Cruz in the 15 May issue of Nature. Such an extreme shift suggests the existence of an internal liquid ocean beneath the icy crust, which could help build the case for Europa as possible habitat for extraterrestrial life.
The research team, which included Isamu Matsuyama of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, used images from the Voyager, Galileo, and New Horizons spacecraft to map several large arc-shaped depressions that extend more than 500 kilometers across Europa’s surface. With a radius of about 1500 kilometers, Europa is slightly smaller than the Earth’s moon.
By comparing the pattern of the depressions with fractures that would result from stresses caused by a shift in Europa’s rotational axis, the researchers determined that the axis had shifted by approximately 80°. The previous axis of rotation is now located about 10° from the present equator.
The drastic shift in Europa’s rotational axis was likely a result of the build-up of thick ice at the poles. "A spinning body is most stable with its mass farthest from its spin axis," says Matsuyama. "On Europa, variations in the thickness of its outer shell caused a mass imbalance, so the rotation axis reoriented to a new stable state."
Arc-shaped troughs (black and white arrows) extend 100s of kilometers on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. These enigmatic features are likely fractures resulting from a shift in Europa’s spin axis. Vertical scale bar (right) is 100 km. (Credit: P. Schenk/NASA/LPI)
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May 15, 2008
A variety of middle-class people are making a conscious but careful choice to use marijuana to enhance their leisure activities, a University of Alberta study shows
A qualitative study of 41 Canadians surveyed in 2005-06 by U of A researchers showed that there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ marijuana user, but that people of all ages are selectively lighting up the drug as a way to enhance activities ranging from watching television and playing sports to having sex, painting or writing.
"For some of the participants, marijuana enhanced their ability to relax by taking their minds off daily stresses and pressures. Others found it helpful in focusing on the activity at hand," said Geraint Osborne, a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta’s Augustana Campus in Camrose, and one of the study’s authors.
The focus was on adult users who were employed, ranging in age from 21 to 61, including 25 men and 16 women from Alberta, Quebec, Ontario and Newfoundland whose use of the drug ranged from daily to once or twice a year. They were predominantly middle class and worked in the retail and service industries, in communications, as white-collar employees, or as health-care and social workers. As well, 68 per cent of the users held post-secondary degrees, while another 11 survey participants had earned their high school diplomas.
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May 15, 2008
A Swiss marine biologist and an Australian quantum physicist have found that a species of shrimp from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, can see a world invisible to all other animals.
Dr Sonja Kleinlogel and Professor Andrew White have shown that mantis shrimp not only have the ability to see colours from the ultraviolet through to the infrared, but have optimal polarisation vision — a first for any animal and a capability that humanity has only achieved in the last decade using fast computer technology.
"The mantis shrimp is a delightfully weird beastie," said Professor White, of the University of Queensland. "They’re multi-coloured, their genus and species names mean ‘mouth-feet’ and ‘genital-fingers’; they can move each eye independently, they see the world in 11 or 12 primary colours as opposed to our humble three, and now we find that this species can see a world invisible to the rest of us."
Dr Kleinlogel, is based at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt, and collected the shrimp from the reef. She notes that, "…scuba divers know them as ‘thumb-splitters’, they’ve got wickedly strong claws and are very aggressive!"
Mantis shrimp (Gonodactylus smithii). (Credit: Roy Caldwell)
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