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Cryobots Could Drill Into Icy Moons With Remote Fiber-Optic Laser Power | Wired Science
<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-106968" title="Valkyrie_cutaway" src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/04/Valkyrie_cutaway.jpg" alt="" width="660" height="505" /> Future extraterrestrial rovers may be powered remotely by high-energy laser beams shot through miles of thin fiber-optic cables. This new technology could allow robotic probes to penetrate thick layers of ice to explore Antarctic lakes or the subterranean oceans on icy moons like Europa or Enceladus, and even power a new kind of rocket into space. “Our modest goal over the next three years is to use a 5,000-watt laser to send a cryobot through up to 250 meters of ice,” inventor and explorer Bill Stone , who presented the new concept today at NASA’s Astrobiology Science Conference in Atlanta, told Wired. “All the data show there are no show-stoppers for doing that.
The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) | Threat Level
<img alt="" src="/threatlevel/wp-content/gallery/20-04/ff_nsadatacenter_f.jpg" title="Feature" width="660"/> Photo: Name Withheld; Digital Manipulation: Jesse Lenz The spring air in the small , sand-dusted town has a soft haze to it, and clumps of green-gray sagebrush rustle in the breeze. Bluffdale sits in a bowl-shaped valley in the shadow of Utah’s Wasatch Range to the east and the Oquirrh Mountains to the west. It’s the heart of Mormon country, where religious pioneers first arrived more than 160 years ago. They came to escape the rest of the world, to understand the mysterious words sent down from their god as revealed on buried golden plates, and to practice what has become known as “the principle,” marriage to multiple wives.
Are you ready for a 'quantified life'?
Opinion April 14, 2012 07:00 AM ET Computerworld - That smartphone you carry around is a box full of sensors.Physicists Create First Long-Distance Quantum Link | Wired Science
<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-106003" title="optical-quantum-network-max-planck" src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/04/optical-quantum-network-max-planck.jpg" alt="" width="660" height="484" /> By Jim Heirbaut, Science NOW For more than a decade, physicists have been developing quantum mechanical methods to pass secret messages without fear that they could be intercepted. But they still haven’t created a true quantum network — the fully quantum-mechanical analog to an ordinary telecommunications network in which an uncrackable connection can be forged between any two stations or “nodes” in a network. Now, a team of researchers in Germany has built the first true quantum link using two widely separate atoms.
Optimizing User Experience | User Experience Design | Above the Fold & Socially Acceptable | Above the Fold & Socially Acceptable
User experience optimization is just as important as any other SEO practice Being the amazing search engine marketer that you are, every single page of your website has been perfectly optimized. Every title tag carefully constructed with the most relevant and highly searched keywords and elegantly crafted to be the perfect character length. Every meta description is unique, informative and has a call to action that is sure to pull the customer in.Nasa
For those of you waiting to see the results from our on-orbit checkout of the smartphone, this post summarizes our data. The Tests SPHERES operates inside the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM). As shown in the diagram below, we’ve defined a JEM coordinate system with X forward, Y starboard, Z toward the deck, and the origin in the middle of the module.
Nokia Lumia 900 review
Long-awaited, heralded, longed for, lusted after, overdue, deal breaker, savior, second coming, dead-on arrival, revelation, last gasp, comeback, hail mary pass, flagship... finally ! If that string of descriptors hasn't already tipped you off, Nokia's Windows Phone messiah has arrived stateside to either silence critics or give' em fodder for further nay-saying. Ensconced in a polycarbonate frame that's similar to the N9 , the Lumia 900 on AT&T's LTE network is widely understood to be Espoo's first true stab at building a presence for a mobile brand that's ubiquitous everywhere but here. To understand the gamble the company's making with the Lumia 900, one need only look to another critically acclaimed, yet interminably stalled overseas import: Kylie Minogue. That foreign pop siren, a music industry veteran, has repeatedly failed to empty mainstream American wallets with her scattered hits, despite enjoying chart domination across the globe.
Facebook is headquartered in Menlo Park, California at a site that used belong to Sun Microsystems. A large sign with Facebook's distinctive "like" symbol—a hand making the thumbs-up gesture—marks the entrance. When I arrived at the campus recently, a small knot of teenagers had congregated, snapping cell phone photos of one another in front of the sign.
Exclusive: a behind-the-scenes look at Facebook release engineering
Larry Page and Sergey Brin have long had the dream of a hands-free, mobile Google, where search was a seamless process as you moved around the world. As the years progressed the vision did, too, expanding beyond search to persistent connections with the people in your lives. In other words, Google’s view of the world now has the social side fully baked into it.
Google Gets Transparent With Glass, Its Augmented Reality Project | Epicenter
[Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 11, 1974] The particular occasion of this lecture, combined with the chief practical problem which economists have to face today, have made the choice of its topic almost inevitable. On the one hand the still recent establishment of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science marks a significant step in the process by which, in the opinion of the general public, economics has been conceded some of the dignity and prestige of the physical sciences. On the other hand, the economists are at this moment called upon to say how to extricate the free world from the serious threat of accelerating inflation which, it must be admitted, has been brought about by policies which the majority of economists recommended and even urged governments to pursue.
The Pretense of Knowledge - Friedrich A. Hayek
Human brain has been 'shrinking for the last 20,000 years'
By Daily Mail Reporter UPDATED: 18:05 GMT, 31 December 2010 It's not something we'd like to admit, but it seems the human race may actually be becoming increasingly dumb. Man's brain has been gradually shrinking over the last 20,000 years, according to a new report.Introduction to Microsoft Sync Framework
Microsoft Corporation October 2009 Introduction Microsoft Sync Framework is a comprehensive synchronization platform enabling collaboration and offline for applications, services and devices. Developers can build synchronization ecosystems that integrate any application, any data from any store using any protocol over any network. Sync Framework features technologies and tools that enable roaming, sharing, and taking data offline. A key aspect of Sync Framework is the ability to create custom providers.The Triumph of Logic By the time Europe had recovered from the Napoleonic chaos, science had advanced far enough to have a significant effect on technology. The Industrial Revolution, born in England well before Napoleon, took hold in Europe in the early nineteenth century and catapulted Western civilization far beyond any of its competitors. By the latter half of the nineteenth century, confidence in Reason had mushroomed into insufferable pride and vainglory. The Victorians were disgustingly smug about themselves; they looked down on all other cultures as inferior.
Triumph of Logic
There’s been a lot of discussion on Apple’s Facetime product, and some questions asked over whether Facetime uses the traditional phone network at all. The answer appears to be: No, not at all. There is no traditional call setup if you initiate a Facetime session outright. At Jobs’ most recent keynote, he popped up a slide which rattled off a few open standards: SIP , ICE (and by extension, STUN and TURN ), RTP , and H.264 . Now, I’ve used the Skype video calling integrated into my N900, and it works well, but Skype remains a closed protocol. And while Skype borrows lots of ideas from at least ICE and RTP, it doesn’t necessarily play by the standards and so it’s difficult for third-parties to inter-operate.
iPhone4, Facetime, and open standards — You shot the invisible swordsman.
Pininfarina designs Ferraris. Pininfarina designs Maseratis. But on a sleepy Wednesday afternoon in Westwood, the Pininfarina design that is attracting attention is a soda dispenser in the new pizzeria 800 Degrees. Teenagers approach the sleek, glistening slab like apes drawn to the monolith at the beginning of