A false case that delayed India's cryogenic
project

post from Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News on 11 September 2012 11:17:25 PM. © Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News

New Delhi (IANS) Sep 12, 2012
In the early 1990s, S. Nambi Narayanan was working to develop cryogenic technology when things went for a toss and he was arrested on false espionage charges, which according to him was an "international conspiracy" to delay the project. "The aim was to demoralise ISRO and to delay the process (of making cryogenic engine) we were in at that time for at least two years, as this was worth billions

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oject_999.html

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ATK and United Launch Alliance Test GEM-60 Motor

post from Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News on 11 September 2012 11:17:25 PM. © Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News

Promontory UT (SPX) Sep 12, 2012
ATK and United Launch Alliance (ULA) conducted a successful cold-temperature ground test of a Graphite Epoxy Motor (GEM-60) solid rocket motor used to boost ULA's Delta IV launch vehicles. The 60-inch diameter and 53-feet long motor, which was chilled to a core temperature of 30 degrees F, performed as designed, producing approximately 270,000 pounds of thrust and burned for 90 seconds. Th

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tor_999.html

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Cosmoquest Astronomy Hour, Wednesday: What's up
with Curiosity on Mars, with guest: me! (yes, again)

post from Planetary Society Blog on 11 September 2012 08:48:19 PM. © Planetary Society Blog

Join me and Fraser Cain on Wednesday, September 12 at 4:00 p.m. PDT / 2300 UTC for Cosmoquest Astronomy Hour. I'll be updating you and answering questions about the latest events on the Curiosity mission.

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tml

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NCBI ROFL: A new use for slugs: as shampoo
testers.

post from Discoblog » NCBI ROFL on 11 September 2012 07:00:46 PM. © Discoblog » NCBI ROFL

The slug mucosal irritation (SMI) assay: development of a screening tool for the evaluation of ocular discomfort caused by shampoos.

“In this research, the slug mucosal irritation (SMI) assay was applied to predict ocular discomfort caused by shampoos to investigate the correlation between responses in slugs and humans. Several SMI experiments and a human eye irritation test (HEIT) were performed with 1 artificial tear solution (ArtTear) and 5 shampoos (A-E; 5%-dilution). In the HEIT, evaluation was performed by participants and an ophthalmologist at several time points. Analyses reveal that (1) a significant positive association existed between immediate stinging reaction reported by the participants and the mean total mucus produced by the slugs (MTMP) (Spearman’s Rank correlation=0.986, p<0.001); (2) ArtTear was best tolerated in both tests; (3) moreover, all shampoos induced higher reactions than ArtTear and water; (4) Shampoo A induced the highest MTMP and received higher scores for immediate discomfort; (5) B was the best tolerated shampoo in both tests, while C, D and E resulted in more pronounced reactions; (6) lacrimation was found not to be statistically correlated with discomfort sensations reported by the participants. The SMI assay is a promising evaluation method for ...

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Forgetting as an unwitting confession of your
values

post from Top stories on 11 September 2012 06:57:17 PM. © Top stories

Story Source

I woke this morning to find my Facebook feed full of reminders to "never forget" the September 11 terrorist attacks. I am reminded of the Jewish community's insistence that we keep vivid the memory of the Holocaust.

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Oceans of Robots

post from Top stories on 11 September 2012 06:30:27 PM. © Top stories

What if self powering robots could gather sophisticated data on everything from salinity and currents, to sniffing for oil leaks and monitoring marine protected areas? Ed Lu shows technology that does just that.

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Jupiter takes a hit

post from Top stories on 11 September 2012 06:10:04 PM. © Top stories

Story Source

Caught on webcam by amateur astronomer George Hall in Dallas, Texas, the impact on Jupiter that occurred yesterday at 6:35 a.m.

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Thursday: Watch Bill Nye Host YouTube SpaceLab
Webcast

The Planetary Society CEO goes to London to MC a live conversation with ISS astronaut Sunita Williams and the kids who've had their experiments conducted in orbit.

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Album Release Party: Network Visualization
Edition

Last week, indie pop group The xx released their highly anticipated second album titled coexist. While the album has been available in stores, the band also streamed the album for free on their website ? with a twist.

Every time a fan shared the streaming album via Facebook, Twitter, or email, the band tracked the geographic locations of the sharer and new listener. After compiling the data, they created an interactive data visualization tool detailing the album's spread around the globe. While listening to the entire album, you can watch as golden streams dance across the map, showing which regions have been infected with the band's beats and rhythms.

So where does physics come into play? Physics, especially statistical mechanics, has played a strong role in shaping the field of network theory that underlies this album release experiment. But maybe researchers could learn a thing or two from musicians like The xx. Experiments like this combined with social music players such as spotify and last.fm could reveal where the world's most influential tastemakers reside. Just add a pinch of motivated network researchers, and mix thoroughly.

A screengrab from The xx's data visualization tool.

Network researchers have drawn inspiration from physics for a number of diverse applications. On the Buzz blog, we've covered how scientists used Twitter to correctly predict the American Idol winner and simple models used to explain ideological conflict. For another article, I learned that triangulation used in cellular networks inspired researchers working to track down the source of an epidemic.

Tracking the spread of music seems like a straightforward application of earlier research on social networks. The data are certainly there. A decade ago, Last.fm pioneered audio scrobbling ? a way to track what users are listening to and give them relevant recommendations. Since then, billions of songs have been scrobbled on the site. More recently, social music player Spotify has surged in popularity, partly due to its integration with Facebook.

Much of this data on what people are listening to is also geo-tagged, which would allow researchers to track the spread of a new album or song. I'd certainly be interested in seeing how certain bands' popularity spreads geographically.

More broadly, researchers could couple this data with musical recommendations like the ones created by last.fm. Perhaps research could eventually reveal emerging trends or genres in music ? even before Pitchfork identifies them.

After a cursory search online, there seems to be little interest among researchers in tracking the spread of musical tastes. Nonetheless, the advent of huge listening datasets and advances in network theory could lead to some interesting findings. Hopefully, physicists and computer scientists are listening.

You can play around with The xx's data visualization tool on their website, or click on the embedded box below. You can control the music on the bottom left hand screen, and the top right sliding scale enables you to track the album's spread over the last week.

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If you want to keep up with Hyperspace, AKA Brian, you can follow him on Twitter.

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lease-party-network.html

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Evolution beats creationism in South Korea
textbook battle

There?s been a victory for sense and science in South Korea, as the government there has rejected calls to drop references to the evolution of birds from the national school curriculum.

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http://machineslikeus.com/news/evolution-beats-creationism-south-korea-textbook-b
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