NASA's next Mars rover to launch in 2020

The stunning success of the Curiosity Mars rover has emboldened NASA to have another go. The US space agency announced plans yesterday to send a new robotic explorer to the Red Planet in 2020.

This rover will have the same chassis as Curiosity and a duplicate sky crane will lower it to the surface. The 2020 rover will even use spare parts left over from the Curiosity mission, such as a nuclear power supply.

Reusing plans and parts is a smart move since NASA can be confident it doesn't have to iron out design kinks, and it will save on costs, says John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the science mission directorate at NASA.

The rover is expected to cost $1.5 billion ? $1 billion less than Curiosity's price tag.

Rock collector

News of the new rover came hard on the heels of a somewhat mixed announcement from the Curiosity mission, revealed on 3 December at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco. An interview on public radio with chief scientist John Grotzinger led to frantic speculation that the rover had already found definitive evidence for organics, carbon-containing compounds that are the building blocks of life.

Mission scientists revealed that the rover had baked Mars soil and detected organic molecules inside its ovens, but they couldn't confirm whether the carbon was Martian or merely an Earthly contaminant.

"The Earth-shaking news from Curiosity is that it all works," Grunsfeld said at an AGU press conference on 4 December. "It's amazing that we were able to send such a craft to Mars and the seven minutes of terror [descending through the Martian atmosphere] resulted in a soft landing."

Eventually, NASA is aiming to bring back pristine samples of Martian rock for thorough analysis on Earth. With that in mind, the 2020 rover may test the technologies for sample return, including handling and storing rock on board.

"Including caching would make the rover responsive to the National Academy Decadal Survey," says Scott Hubbard of Stanford University in California, referring to priorities outlined by the US National Academy of Sciences for the next decade of planetary exploration.

The new rover might also have a 3D camera with a zoom lens that was meant to fly on Curiosity. The camera, built in collaboration with film-maker James Cameron, did not make it on board for the 6 August launch because of technical difficulties.

"I was a big fan of the 3D [camera] and the zoom lens," Grunsfeld said yesterday at a press briefing. "I'm more than happy to engage in a spirited discussion for this next rover to include those elements."

Head start

In a slight reversal of plans, NASA also announced at the AGU that it will use some of its 2013 budget to support the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter mission, due for launch in 2016. NASA will provide the communications system that will let the orbiter talk to Earth and to instruments on the surface of Mars. The agency will also help build the Mars organic molecule analyser (MOMA), the largest instrument scheduled to fly on ESA's ExoMars rover in 2018, Grunsfeld said.

He emphasised that NASA is not asking for more money for the 2020 rover mission, but is merely specifying how the money already requested will be spent.

"We have the backing and the approval of the administration to move forward with this plan," NASA's director of planetary science, James Green, told New Scientist. Other NASA projects waiting for approval need not fear being short-changed, said Grunsfeld. "It doesn't raid other parts of planetary or science [missions]."

For now, NASA's 2013 budget is being debated by Congress. But in making yesterday's announcement, NASA hopes to get a head-start on the new rover mission.

"Even though 2020 may seem like a long way off, it's really not a lot of time to get ready, so we kind of had to start," Grunsfeld told New Scientist. "Being able to put together a science definition team and having things roll six months sooner than later could actually make a difference in the ability to mount such a mission."

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Robotic equivalent of a Swiss army knife: Reconfigurable robot a step toward something that can become almost anything

ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2012) ? The device doesn't look like much: a caterpillar-sized assembly of metal rings and strips resembling something you might find buried in a home-workshop drawer. But the technology behind it, and the long-range possibilities it represents, are quite remarkable.

The little device is called a milli-motein -- a name melding its millimeter-sized components and a motorized design inspired by proteins, which naturally fold themselves into incredibly complex shapes. This minuscule robot may be a harbinger of future devices that could fold themselves up into almost any shape imaginable.

The device was conceived by Neil Gershenfeld, head of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, visiting scientist Ara Knaian and graduate student Kenneth Cheung, and is described in a paper presented recently at the 2012 Intelligent Robots and Systems conference. Its key feature, Gershenfeld says: "It's effectively a one-dimensional robot that can be made in a continuous strip, without conventionally moving parts, and then folded into arbitrary shapes."

To build the world's smallest chain robot, the team had to invent an entirely new kind of motor: not only small and strong, but also able to hold its position firmly even with power switched off. The researchers met these needs with a new system called an electropermanent motor.

The motor is similar in principle to the giant electromagnets used in scrapyards to lift cars, in which a powerful permanent magnet (one that, like an ordinary bar magnet, requires no power) is paired with a weaker magnet (one whose magnetic field direction can be flipped by an electric current in a coil). The two magnets are designed so that their fields either add or cancel, depending on which way the switchable field points. Thus, the force of the powerful magnet can be turned off at will -- such as to release a suspended car -- without having to power an enormous electromagnet the whole time.

In this new miniature version, a series of permanent magnets paired with electromagnets are arranged in a circle; they drive a steel ring that's situated around them. The key innovation, Knaian explains, is that "they do not take power in either the on or the off state, but only use power in the changing state," using minimal energy overall.

The milli-motein concept follows up on a paper, published last year, which examined the theoretical possibility of assembling any desired 3-D shape simply by folding a long string of identical subunits. That paper, co-authored by Cheung, MIT professor Erik Demaine, alumnus Saul Griffith, and former Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory research scientist Jonathan Bachrach, proved mathematically that it was possible for any 3-D shape to be reproduced by folding a sufficiently long string -- and that it's possible to figure out how to fold such a string, and the exact steps needed to successfully reach the desired endpoint.

"We showed that you could make such a universal system that's very simple," Cheung says. While he and his colleagues have not yet proved a way of always finding the optimal path to a given folded shape, they did find several useful strategies for arriving at practical folding sequences.

Demaine points out that the folding of the shape doesn't have to be sequential, moving along the string one joint at a time. "Ideally, you'd like to do it all at once," he says, with each of the joints folding themselves to the desired configuration simultaneously so that the loads are distributed.

Other researchers, including some at MIT, have explored the idea of fashioning reconfigurable robots from a batch of separate pieces that could self-assemble into different configurations -- an approach sometimes called "programmable pebbles." But Gershenfeld's team found that a string of subunits capable of folding itself into any shape could be simpler in terms of control, power and communications than using separate pieces that must find each other and assemble in the right order. "You can just pass signals down the chain," Knaian says.

It's part of an overall approach, Gershenfeld explains, to "turning data into things." In an article in the current issue of the magazine Foreign Affairs, he describes a technology roadmap for accomplishing that, and its policy implications. He and his colleagues have established a global network of more than 100 "fab labs" that provide community access to computer-controlled fabrication tools. Today, the design information is contained in an external computer rather than in the materials being manufactured, but the research goal is to digitize the materials themselves so that they can ultimately change their own shape, as the milli-motein does.

Hod Lipson, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and computing and information science at Cornell University, says, "This result brings us closer to the idea of programmable matter -- where computer programs and materials merge to form a new kind of matter whose shape and function can be programmed -- not unlike biology. Many people are excited today to learn about 3-D printing and its ability to fabricate any shape; Gershenfeld's group is already thinking about the next episode, where we don't just control the shape of objects, but also their behavior."

The milli-motein is part of a family of such devices being explored at size scales ranging from protein-based "nanoassemblers" to a version where the chain is as big as a person, Gershenfeld says. Ultimately, a reconfigurable robot should be "small, cheap, durable and strong," Knaian says, adding that right now, "it's not possible to get all of those." Still, he points out, "Biology is the existence proof that it is possible."

The MIT researchers' work could lead to robotic systems that can be dynamically reconfigured to do many different jobs rather than repeating a fixed function, and that can be produced much more cheaply than conventional robotics.

The development of the milli-motein was supported by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation and Programmable Matter projects.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/IU_HhUYDock/121130132743.htm

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With 6.5M Members, AppTrailers Adds A Free Daily App

AppTrailers, an app that rewards users for watching videos that promote other apps,?just released an update with a new "Free Today" section. The section will highlight one app per day ? either a paid app being offered for free or a freemium app with normally a paid virtual that's being provided for free.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/T26K9TWExsI/

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Hundreds Of Small Businesses Are Fighting ... - Business Insider

The issue of urban development is never easy. Incorporating old communities into new ones is always fraught with controversy, especially in New York City.

The area of Willets Point in Queens has long been a target for re-development.

In December of 2011, Mayor Bloomberg finally broke ground on a plan to create a shopping mall, convention center, hotel and affordable housing in the area. Though the plan has run into various legal obstacles since then, businesses in the area have begun receiving letters ordering them to vacate their property by February of 2013.

While the city says will the plan will create hundreds of new jobs and spur economic growth in the area, for many who work and own businesses there, the mayor's plan is simply a recipe for their demise.

Watch the video below to see why.

?

Produced by Robert Libetti

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Veterans Wish They Got This Kind Of Respect Every Day

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/willets-point-development-new-york-2012-11

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Church 2063: Sexuality | TrinityDigitalMedia.com

In 1963, homosexuality was the punchline to a joke that you didn't want your mother to know you knew. Today, it's a a common lifestyle. When kids wanted to rebel, they would drink or smoke. Maybe they'd have premarital sex. Today, those are common choices although tobacco is giving way to marijuana and many states are even legalizing it.

Fifty years ago, miniskirts were about to come into fashion. The late sixties saw growth in fashion trends that showed more and more skin. They couldn't have imagined more conservative trends would return, but eventually college coeds would eventually go to spring break wearing thongs on their rear ends.

Now, several states are dealing with the implications of gender equality on clothing laws. If men aren't required to wear clothing that covers their chests, why should women be required to do so? New York already said that toplessness is permissible for both women and men, even though culture is slow to make the shift. In the election in November 2012, San Francisco voters narrowly voted to make indecent exposure illegal.

I don't think public nudity will be legal in all parts of the US in ten years. I do think that the people of 2063 will view our emphasis on covering certain body parts as prudish.

I'm not saying they'll be right, but that's the view. If you want to know how people will feel, think about your feeling around Muslim women who wear head scarves or more. It could be that Christian young women who chastely wear thong, string bikinis will be laughed at by their nude friends on the beach. It's funny to think of a thong as a modest body covering, but the tankini would have seemed radical fifty years ago, but is the bathing suit of choice among many Christian girls today who see the one-piece as too prudish, but the thong as too revealing.

Nudity won't be the only thing that we see more of in the next fifty years. I've mentioned trio and multiple marriages, but I think that we'll see dating relationships that are precursors to these marriages.

Looking for a wedding ring might not tell you if someone is done looking or not. A married woman might be looking for a wife to go with her husband or a second husband. Maybe some people will prefer dating married people. They'll reason that a husband has already made a commitment and since multiple marriages will be legal, he might be looking for another spouse.

It's possible that as spouses get used to their relationship, they'll think they can add spice by adding another person to the relationship. A husband who's lost interest in sex might encourage his wife to let him be the provider, but get a new husband to fulfill her sexual needs.

Instead of dealing with problems, people might think it's natural to add others. This reminds me of when I worked in tech support and installers would call up and just want to add more and more equipment to an installation to fix a problem, but instead they just complicated the problem. Relationships will be the same way. People will try to fix simple problems by making things more complicated.

Just as grocery stores now have contraceptives, they'll start carrying more sexually themed devices. While people used to have to go to certain areas of town or order online for these items, you'll see them next to the condoms in the pharmacy.

The sexual revolution of the 60s was stunted by the AIDS outbreak of the 80s. As medicine develops more and more remedies for AIDS and other diseases, a new free-love movement could surface again.

Labels like homosexual and heterosexual might seem antiquated as people choose sexual partners based on momentary preference and not lifestyle.

Just as we now sometimes hear people say, "I'm not gay, but I did experiment in college," we might hear people say "I sleep with whoever I want. It all works for me."

Believe it or not, this way of thinking is actually rather old. A friend of mine in seminary arrived with a masters degree in classical studies. He told me that ancient Greeks didn't think of themselves as homosexual, but that there was nothing wrong with any form of sexual expression they could think of. It wasn't unusual for older men to have a young male lover for a time before getting married to a woman to start a family.

The difference is that women are now equals, so we can probably imagine that some women might experiment with lesbianism before marrying a man for family reasons. Some women will be life-long lesbians, but moving back and forth between sexual lifestyles and practices won't be seen as unusual.

This also means that transexuals and transvestites might be quite common as people struggle to find their identities. Maybe a man will get breast implants and live as a transexual for a time before going back to life as a straight man and then dabbling in homosexual practices.

As science expands, its possible that gay and lesbian couples will no longer need a third party to have children. Perhaps lesbians will be able to harvest eggs from one partner and science will harvest the DNA and make synthetic sperm that can impregnate the other partner.

It's a more difficult problem to enable men to carry a baby to term, so perhaps an artificial uterus will be invented. In a similar procedure, a male's sperm can become an egg and the partner's sperm will enable a gay couple to have their own genetic offspring.

The artificial uterus might mean that straight couples choose not to carry their own babies. Many women would now prefer not to have some of the changes that their bodies undergo as a part of pregnancy. This will mean that some women will have children that are genetically theirs, but who weren't gestated in a human womb. If the artificial uterus is invented, it might start as a way to help women who've had hysterectomies or who are unable to carry a baby to term, but these other uses will follow soon.

A possible unintended consequence of early babies born this way might be a lack of bonding as infants are strangers to their parents' voices and heart beats. This might be easy to overcome, but at risk infants might need extra care.

For churches, the changes in sex and family will be frightening. The challenge will be to bring people with new family and sexual patterns into the church so that they don't dismiss God immediately as judging. I'll probably be dead when these things come to fruition, but it won't be easy to love people who don't think non-traditional relationships are wrong. It will be hard to balance grace and truth, but just as the early church welcomed former temple prostitutes and others who had more difficult sexual pasts, so the mid-twenty-first century must learn to love people despite whatever their past.

Paul

Source: http://trinitydigitalmedia.com/2012/11/church-2063-sexuality/

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Elon Musk Wants to Build 80,000-Person Mars Colony

Link Information - Click to View

Elon Musk Wants to Build 80,000-Person Mars Colony
Elon Musk doesn't just want to put a person on Mars -- he wants to put 80,000. According to Space.com, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX recently spilled details about his hopes for a future Mars colony during a talk at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London on Nov. 16.

Source: Wired
Posted on: Tuesday, Nov 27, 2012, 10:21am
Views: 8

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/125500/Elon_Musk_Wants_to_Build________Person_Mars_Colony

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Online Reputation Management Solutions Will Help Your Business ...

More and more people and companies have come to realize that protecting their reputation and brand online is a must if they want to keep their heads above water in this harsh economy. As a matter of fact, social media, online marketing and social commerce have created an environment where it is hard for today?s companies to thrive. More than ever, the burden placed on marketing departments is increasing exponentially. This burden refers to managing their brand?s image.

Online reputation management is a fairly new field of management that sprang up over the last few years due to the increasing need of a positive brand image among customers. Today, customers are those who dictate where the market goes, and which company out there is the best.

Because of the expansion of social networks, viral marketing has become extremely important for companies who want to be two steps ahead of their competitors. This means both small and large businesses that are oblivious to the tremendous amount of influence customers have today, will be certainly taken aback. This is why every business owner who realized the importance of his company?s brand image appeals to online reputation management services.

Reputation Champ is an online reputation management company dedicated to help both individuals and businesses enhance their reputation online. Unlike the radio, newspaper or television, the Internet won?t forget that. This is why it is imperative for companies and individuals to take control of their online reputation. Reputation Champ offers several services including reputation repair, reputation management, reputation building, search engine optimization, negative content removal and social media monitoring.

Their newest service, called Reputation Monitor, is offered for free for the first month. This service that can be tried by anybody who wants to enhance his reputation. Reputation Monitor searches all the photo, video and social networks websites, finding the negative comments regarding a subject or a company. This tool also searches hundreds of blogs, forums and news websites that are visited by millions of people from all over the world.

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To learn more about the services offered by Reputation Champ and to take advantage of the free 30 day trial of their reputation monitoring, please visit their website and take advantage of the free consultation.

Source: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/13458628-online-reputation-management-solutions-will-help-your-business-grow

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