Ford unveils automated parking system for Lincoln MKS and MKT

Ford is introducing an automatic parking system in the flagship Lincoln MKS sedan, as well as the upcoming Lincoln MKT seven-seat luxury crossover, to help drivers parallel park with ease. Known as 'Active Park Assist', the system will be available in mid-2009 as an option on both cars. Earlier this year, we reported that Ford was planning on fitting around 90% of its vehicles with electronic steering, and that this electronic steering technology would facilitate the implementation of an automatic parking system, similar to that seen in luxury marques such as Lexus. However, unlike camera-based systems used in Lexus models, 'Active Park Assist' uses an ultrasonic-based sensing system and Electric Power Assisted Steering (EPAS) to position the vehicle for parallel parking, calculate the optimal steering angle and steer the vehicle into a parking spot. According to Ford, the technology is a "major leap forward in speed and ease of use compared with the camera-reliant systems offered by competitors" as the system requires less driver interface and reduces the risk of selecting a parking spot that is too tight, as well as having the ability to work in downhill parking situations. Practically speaking, using the system itself is fairly simple - the driver activates the system by simply pressing an instrument panel button, which activates the ultrasonic sensors to measure and identify a feasible parallel parking space. The system then prompts the driver to accept the system assistance to park, at which point the steering system then takes over and steers the car into the parking space hands-free. Like other systems, the driver still shifts the transmission and operates the gas and brake pedals while a visual and/or audible driver interface advises the driver about the proximity of other cars, objects and people and provides instructions until the park is complete. In the event of anything untoward, the driver can interrupt the system by grasping the steering wheel and using the brakes. Currently, Ford plans to fit even more models with electronic steering, which means that more and more Ford models should be available with the Active Park Assist feature in the near future. On top of helping drivers park their vehicles, electronic steering improves fuel economy up to 5 percent, while reducing CO2 emissions and enhancing steering performance compared with traditional hydraulic powered-assisted steering systems.

Lincon MKS

 

Lincon  MKT

NASA says Columbia crew had no chance to survive

Astronauts on theshuttle Columbia were trying to regain control of their craft before it broke apart in 2003, but there was no chance of surviving the accident, a NASAreport said on Tuesday.

     From the crew's perspective, the shift from what appeared to be a normal descent on February 1, 2003, into disaster happened so fast that the astronauts didn't even have time to close the visors on their helmets.

Columbia broke apart about 12 miles over Texas as it headed for landing at the Kennedy Space Center. The cause of the accident was traced to a hole in one of the shuttle's wings, which was hit by a piece of falling foam insulation during launch 16 days earlier.

Seven astronauts, includingIsrael's first astronaut Ilan Ramon, were killed when superheated atmospheric gases blasted inside the breach like a blow torch, melting the ship's structure.

The crew cabin broke away from the ship and started spinning rapidly. Analysis of the wreckage indicated the crew members had flipped cockpit switches in response to alarms that were sounding. The astronauts had also reset the shuttle's autopilot system, the report said.

"We have evidence from some of the switch positions that the crew was trying very hard to regain control. We're talking about a very brief time in a crisis situation," said NASA's deputy associate administrator, Wayne Hale.

But rapid depressurization caused the Columbia crew to lose consciousness, and medical findings show that they could not have recovered, said the report, which took four years to compile.

"This report confirms that although the valiant Columbia crew tried every possible way to maintain control of their vehicle, the accident was not ultimately survivable," said Hale, who oversaw the shuttle program during its return to flight after the accident.

TRAUMATIC INJURIES

Analysis shows the astronauts' shoulder harnesses failed and their helmets did not adequately protect their heads. The lack of safety restraints caused traumatic injuries.

The investigation also found problems with the shuttle's seats and parachute landing system, which requires astronauts be conscious to operate manually.

Even if the safety gear had worked, the astronauts would have died due to the winds, shock waves and other extreme conditions in the upper atmosphere.

Designing spacesuits that are more automated and integrated into future spaceships is among 30 recommendations made in the report.

"I call on spacecraft designers from all the other nations of the world, as well as the commercial and personal spacecraft designers here at home to read this report and apply these hard lessons which have been paid for so dearly," Hale said.

Also killed in the accident were shuttle commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool and astronauts Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla and Laurel Clark.

Much of what is in the report was discovered by the Columbia accident investigation team, which released a series of findings and recommendations six months after the disaster.

The panel advised retiring the space shuttles as soon as NASA finishes using them to complete construction of the International Space Station, a $100 billion project of 16 partner countries that has been under way for more than a decade. The shuttle Challenger broke apart in 1986.

Since the accident, NASA has flown 11 shuttle missions and has nine left in its schedule. A 10th mission to fly a physics experiment to the space station is under consideration.

Smoothbook Slice MSI Wind Netbooks

Smooth Creations Launched Msi Wind Netbooks which are a Smoothbook Slice netbook, which is in fact a rebadged netbook.The Smoothbook Slice has a case with custom, automotive-grade painting,instead of white or black cases.

The Smoothbook Slice is equipped with an Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 120GB hard drive and a 10-inch 1024×768 LCD display.The netbook comes with pre installed windows XP Home. It is priced at $499.99, which is more expensive than the original Wind.

How Helium Can Be Solid And Perfect Liquid At Same Time, Now Explained By Computer-assisted Physics

At very low temperatures, helium can be solid and a perfect liquid at the same time. Theoreticians, though, have incorrectly explained the phenomenon for a long time. Computer simulations at ETH Zurich have shown that only impurities can make this effect possible.

     Matthias Troyer and his team carry out experiments at their computers. Troyer is Professor of Computational Physics at ETH Zurich’s Institute of Theoretical Physics. He simulates quantum phenomena such as “supersolid”  structures. Supersolidity describes a physical phase which can occur at very low temperatures and where a material appears to be solid and “superfluid” at the same time.

Enquiries from the armed forces

However, the word can be misunderstood, as was discovered by one of Troyer’s colleagues who works on the phenomenon in the USA. The US Navy thought that “supersolid” meant “extremely hard” and so asked the physicist whether such a material could be used to armour ships or at least put into a spray can or be used to kill someone. The physicist answered “No” – because “supersolid” does not mean super-hard. After that, the army showed no further interest.

The researchers carry out fundamental research and no direct applications for “supersolidity” are yet on the horizon. At the same time, a group of physicists led by Matthias Troyer has shed light on how the phenomenon occurs. Their results have been published in a series of articles in Physics Review Letters. The first author of the article is post-doctoral researcher Lode Pollet, who has since moved from ETH Zurich to the Universities of Massachusetts and Harvard University in the US. He is in discussions for a professorship, even though he is not yet thirty.

An incorrect explanation

Theoreticians first predicted the “supersolidity” phenomenon in 1969. Their explanation was incorrect, but this escaped notice for some time. The first evidence for “Supersolidity” was measured in an experiment only in 2004. This involved attaching a disc-shaped helium crystal to a spring and rotating it to and fro. In this arrangement, the vibration frequency depends on the rotating mass. The researchers found that the frequency became higher if they cooled the apparatus down to below 0.2 Kelvin – almost down to absolute zero. Part of the mass no longer participated in the rotation; it behaved as a superfluid, meaning it behaved like a friction-free liquid. In other words, it had become “supersolid”.

Up to this point, the measurements were still in line with the theory, but further experiments showed that the proportion of the crystal that became supersolid increased with the number of defects in the crystal. However, the theoreticians who predicted the phenomenon had done their calculations using perfect crystals, ones totally free from defects.

No effect with perfect crystals

At this juncture, the problem became interesting for the computer-assisted physics group led by Matthias Troyer at ETH Zurich and their colleagues in the US and Canada. Although the physicists also carry out experiments, they do so on computer models rather than on the material itself. This allows them to monitor the crystal more closely. For example, they experimented with crystals free from impurities, i.e. perfect crystals of the kind that cannot be grown in the laboratory. No “supersolidity” occurred here.

However, the scientists also grew virtual crystals with defects, for example by orienting the structure of one half of the crystal in a different direction to the other half. They performed this experiment using about one hundred variations with different temperatures and orientations. The result: “supersolidity” occurred where the layers of atoms with different orientations came together, and did so only if the layers did not fit together particularly well. This meant that it depended on the defects, exactly as in the laboratory experiments.

At US customs

Initially, these results were met with rejection from a few scientists. The fact that the phenomenon was possible only when impurities were present did not fit with the view held by the theoreticians, who usually ignore impurities in their considerations. However, the explanation has since gained wide acceptance.

Scientists are not the only people interested in the physicists’ results. When Lode Pollet arrived in the US, a customs officer asked him whether he was the man who worked on this material that was solid and liquid at the same time. Clearly, the American government has not yet lost interest completely.

NASA Study Links Severe Storm Increases, Global Warming

The frequency of extremely high clouds in Earth's tropics -- the type associated with severe storms and rainfall -- is increasing as a result of global warming, according to a study by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

 

In a presentation today to the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, JPL Senior Research Scientist Hartmut Aumann outlined the results of a study based on five years of data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft. The AIRS data were used to observe certain types of tropical clouds linked with severe storms, torrential rain and hail. The instrument typically detects about 6,000 of these clouds each day. Aumann and his team found a strong correlation between the frequency of these clouds and seasonal variations in the average sea surface temperature of the tropical oceans.

For every degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in average ocean surface temperature, the team observed a 45-percent increase in the frequency of the very high clouds. At the present rate of global warming of 0.13 degrees Celsius (0.23 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, the team inferred the frequency of these storms can be expected to increase by six percent per decade.

Climate modelers have long speculated that the frequency and intensity of severe storms may or may not increase with global warming. Aumann said results of the study will help improve their models.

"Clouds and rain have been the weakest link in climate prediction," said Aumann. "The interaction between the daytime warming of the sea surface under clear-sky conditions and increases in the formation of low clouds, high clouds and, ultimately, rain is very complicated. The high clouds in our observations—typically at altitudes of 20 kilometers (12 miles) and higher—present the greatest difficulties for current climate models, which aren't able to resolve cloud structures smaller than about 250 kilometers (155 miles) in size."

Aumann said the results of his study, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, are consistent with another NASA-funded study by Frank Wentz and colleagues in 2005. That study found an increase in the global rain rate of 1.5 percent per decade over 18 years, a value that is about five times higher than the value estimated by climate models that were used in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

New Titanium-glass Alloys Are Tough, Cheap And Light-weight

Scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have created a range of structural metallic-glass composites, based in titanium, that are lighter and less expensive than any the group had previously created, while still maintaining their toughness and ductility--the ability to be deformed without breaking.

Earlier this year, the same Caltech group had published a paper in the journal Nature, describing new strategies for creating the liquid-metal composites. This research resulted in "alloys with unrivaled strength and toughness," notes Douglas Hofmann, visiting scientist and lead author on the PNAS paper that, along with the Nature paper, describes work he did while a graduate student at Caltech. "They are among the toughest engineering materials that currently exist."

Still, there were shortcomings to the alloys presented in Nature. Because they were created for use in the aerospace industry--among other structural applications--they needed to have very low densities. Ideally, the alloys would have had densities in or around those of crystalline titanium alloys, which fall between 4.5 and 5 grams per cubic centimeter (g/cc). The original alloys, made predominantly of zirconium, fell between 5.6 and 6.4 g/cc, putting them "in a no-man's-land of densities for aerospace structures," says Hofmann.

And so Hofmann and his colleagues--including William Johnson, Caltech's Ruben F. and Donna Mettler Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, and a pioneer in the creation of metallic glass--began tweaking the components in their composites, eventually coming up with a group of alloys with a high percentage of titanium, but which maintained the properties of the previously created zirconium alloys.

"Despite being based in titanium," Hofmann notes, "these alloys exhibit the same impressive properties as the zirconium alloys. They are still tough--in other words, they resist cracking--and they are still ductile. In fact, they are even more ductile than the alloys we'd created in the past."

This decrease in density also resulted in a reduction in cost, adds Hofmann, since zirconium is a more expensive metal than is titanium.

The work was supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research. Hofmann was supported by the U.S. Department of Defense through the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship program.

The paper's coauthors included Johnson; Caltech graduate students Jin-Yoo Suh and Aaron Wiest; Mary-Laura Lind, a visitor in materials science; and Marios Demetriou, a senior research fellow in materials science.

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Enhancing Solar Cells With Nanoparticles

Deriving plentiful electricity from sunlight at a modest cost is a challenge with immense implications for energy, technology, and climate policy. Scientists are developing a relatively new approach to solar cells: lacing them with nanoscopic metal particles. As the authors describe in a new article, this approach has the potential to greatly improve the ability of solar cells to harvest light efficiently.

  Like plants, solar cells turn light into energy. Plants do this inside vegetable matter, while solar cells do it in a semiconductor crystal doped with extra atoms. Current solar cells cannot convert all the incoming light into usable energy because some of the light can escape back out of the cell into the air. Additionally, sunlight comes in a variety of colors and the cell might be more efficient at converting bluish light while being less efficient at converting reddish light.

The nanoparticle approach seeks to remedy these problems. The key to this new research is the creation of a tiny electrical disturbance called a "surface plasmon." When light strikes a piece of metal it can set up waves in the surface of the metal. These waves of electrons then move about like ripples on the surface of a pond. If the metal is in the form of a tiny particle, the incoming light can make the particle vibrate, thus effectively scattering the light. If, furthermore, the light is at certain "resonant" colors, the scattering process is particularly strong.

In the Optics Express paper, Kylie Catchpole and Albert Polman show what happens when a thin coating of nanoscopic (a billionth of a meter in size) metal particles are placed onto a solar cell. First of all, the use of nanoparticles causes the incoming sunlight to scatter more fully, keeping more of the light inside the solar cell. Second, varying the size and material of the particles allows researchers to improve light capture at otherwise poorly-performing colors.

In their work, carried out at the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in The Netherlands, Catchpole and Polman showed that light capture for long-wavelength (reddish) light could be improved by a factor of more than ten. Previously Catchpole and co-workers at the University of New South Wales showed that overall light-gathering efficiency for solar cells using metallic nanoparticles can be improved by 30 percent.

"I think we are about three years from seeing plasmons in photovoltaic generation," says Catchpole, who has now started a new group studying surface plasmons at the Australian National University. "An important point about plasmonic solar cells is that they are applicable to any kind of solar cell." This includes the standard silicon or newer thin-film types.

Nintendo to offer videos on Wii

Nintendo will start offering videos through its blockbuster Wii game console, the latest new feature for the Japanese entertainment giant.

Nintendo said it would develop original programming which Wii users could access via the internet and watch on their television. It is considering videos for both free and fees.

The game giant teamed up with Japan's leading advertising firm Dentsu to develop the service, which will begin in Japan next year, with an eye on future expansion into foreign markets.

Japanese rival Sony has already started using its popular PlayStation series for online movie sales and advertising by placing corporate messages inside games, which often have highly niche audiences.

One prominent advertiser was US president-elect Barack Obama, who placed campaign commercials inside a video game produced by Electronic Arts for Microsoft's XBox 360 console.

Nintendo and Dentsu said they were soliciting businesses to take part in the project to develop original Wii videos.

"Nintendo and Dentsu shall use the environment surrounding the Wii so that living rooms with Wii-ready TVs would become more of a fun area for communication among families and friends," the firms said in a joint statement.

Nintendo has shipped 34.55 million Wii consoles around the world, 80 per cent of which are sitting near televisions in living rooms, the company said, adding that 40 per cent of Wii consoles are linked to the internet.

The Wii, launched ahead of the holiday season in 2006, is known for its innovative motion-sensitive controller which has appealed to people buying a video-game machine for the first time.

Nintendo already enables Wii players to use the game consoles to surf the Internet, shop online, organise digital photos and to communicate with Wii-using friends.

Nintendo in November launched in Japan the DSi, which comes with a built-in camera that lets allows the user to alter people's facial expressions.

Sparkling Spray Of Stars Seen

NGC 2264 lies about 2600 light-years from Earth in the obscure constellation of Monoceros, the Unicorn, not far from the more familiar figure of Orion, the Hunter. The image shows a region of space about 30 light-years across.

  William Herschel discovered this fascinating object during his great sky surveys in the late 18th century. He first noticed the bright cluster in January 1784 and the brightest part of the visually more elusive smudge of the glowing gas clouds at Christmas nearly two years later. The cluster is very bright and can easily be seen with binoculars. With a small telescope (whose lenses will turn the view upside down) the stars resemble the glittering lights on a Christmas tree. The dazzling star at the top is even bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye. It is a massive multiple star system that only emerged from the dust and gas a few million years ago.

As well as the cluster there are many interesting and curious structures in the gas and dust. At the bottom of the frame, the dark triangular feature is the evocative Cone Nebula, a region of molecular gas flooded by the harsh light of the brightest cluster members. The region to the right of the brightest star has a curious, fur-like texture that has led to the name Fox Fur Nebula.

Much of the image appears red because the huge gas clouds are glowing under the intense ultra-violet light coming from the energetic hot young stars. The stars themselves appear blue as they are hotter, younger and more massive than our own Sun. Some of this blue light is scattered by dust, as can be seen occurring in the upper part of the image.

This intriguing region is an ideal laboratory for studying how stars form. The entire area shown here is just a small part of a vast cloud of molecular gas that is in the process of forming the next generation of stars. Besides the feast of objects in this picture there are many interesting objects hidden behind the murk of the nebulosity. In the region between the tip of the Cone Nebula and the brightest star at the top of the picture there are several stellar birthing grounds where young stars are forming. There is even evidence of the intense stellar winds from these youthful embryos blasting out from the hidden stars in the making.

This picture of NGC 2264, including the Christmas Tree Cluster, was created from images taken with the Wide Field Imager (WFI), a specialised astronomical camera attached to the 2.2-metre Max-Planck Society/ESO telescope at the La Silla observatory in Chile. Located nearly 2400 m above sea level, in the mountains of the Atacama Desert, ESO's La Silla enjoys some of the clearest and darkest skies on the whole planet, making the site ideally suited for studying the farthest depths of the Universe. To make this image, the WFI stared at the cluster for more than ten hours through a series of specialist filters to build up a full colour image of the billowing clouds of fluorescing hydrogen gas.

The S-300 Mystery Deepens Part One

A senior Russian diplomat Thursday denied the claim by a prominent Iranian lawmaker that Moscow had started delivering components of its S0-300 anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic missile defense system to Tehran.

"I am very surprised by the fuss this story has caused recently. I think this is due to a lack of interesting international news in the run-up to the holidays that many of our Western neighbors are celebrating. This causes an influx of interest in information, which has nothing to do with anything that is going on or will happen," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters in Moscow, according to a report from RIA Novosti.

As previously reported in UPI's BMD Focus column, Esmaeil Kosari, deputy chairman of the parliamentary commission on national security and foreign policy, told Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency Sunday that Russia was already sending components for its formidable S-300PMU-1 system -- NATO designation SA-20 Gargoyle -- to the Islamic republic. In Washington, the outgoing Bush administration quizzed Russia about the report. U.S. officials indicated they also had intelligence information to support Kosari's claim.

However, Russian officials have lined up to deny the claim. Ryabkov insisted that while Russia's weapons and nuclear trading with Iran was continuing, it was all above board and complied with international law.

RIA Novosti also noted that on Monday the Russian federal service for military cooperation also issued a denial of Kosari's claim. "Reports on deliveries of S-300 systems are untrue," it announced in a statement.

Meanwhile, the Iranian government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has remained silent on the controversy, neither confirming nor denying Kosari's claim.

RIA Novosti also reported an Israeli Foreign Ministry statement that the Kremlin had also sent a message to the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that it had not begun to send the S-300s to Iran.

Russian military commentator Ilya Kramnik wrote for RIA Novosti on Dec. 19 that selling five battalions of S-300PMUs to Iran would comprise "up to 20 systems -- 60 launchers -- depending on the makeup of a battalion. Each of the launchers carries four 48N6E missiles -- 48N6E2s with the PMU-2 mobile launchers -- with a range of 150 kilometers -- 90 miles -- up to 200 kilometers -- 120 miles -- for the 48N6E2s."

"Each launch system consists of three launchers and is capable of engaging six targets at the same time, aiming 12 missiles at them. One battalion consisting of four systems is, therefore, capable of dealing with 24 aircraft simultaneously. After changing position and replenishing ammunition, it can be quickly redeployed for repulsing a repeat raid," Kramnik wrote.

Russia also sent to Iran 29 Tor-M1 air defense missile systems worth $700 million under a deal closed in late 2005. RIA Novosti confirmed that Russian technicians had taught Iranian engineers and technicians how to operate the Tor-M1, including the radar systems that guide it.

The issue of whether Russia has in fact already sent components of the S-300 system to Iran is still open. The Israelis appear more ready to accept Russian assurances that they have not than the U.S. government.

Snowy Owl -- A Marine Species?

Wildlife satellite studies could lead to a radical re-thinking about how the snowy owl fits into the Northern ecosystem.

"Six of the adult females that we followed in a satellite study spent most of last winter far out on the Arctic sea ice," said Université Laval doctoral student Jean-Francois Therrien, who is working with Professor Gilles Gauthier as part of an International Polar Year (IPY) research project to better understand key indicator species of Canadian northern ecosystems.
The finding flabbergasted the biologists who are now curious to find out if Inuit seal hunters ever encounter the large white birds on the ice in winter darkness.
"As for what the birds were doing there, they were possibly preying on seabirds," said Gauthier. "Bird researchers at coastal field sites have observed snowy owls attacking eiders in winter. This hypothesis will be strengthened if we can match up the locations of our birds with the position of open water leads in the ice as recorded by other satellite data."
The researchers find it intriguing that the top Arctic bird predator, like the top mammal – the polar bear, is also part of the marine ecosystem. The possible implications for the species will be discussed by Therrien this Wednesday in Quebec City at the Arctic Change Conference, one of the largest international research conferences ever held on the challenges facing the north.
It was very surprising, said Therrien, how far the individual birds migrated from where they were banded on their nesting grounds on Bylot Island, north of Baffin Island.
"The satellite data showed just how dramatic the owl movements are. They flew huge distances. One owl went to Ellesmere Island, another flew straight to North Dakota and a third ended up on the eastern point of Newfoundland," he said.
The researchers say that this winter should provide many southern Canadians with a better than normal opportunity to see the magnificent birds.
"We had the largest abundance of lemmings in many years in our study area this past summer," said Gauthier. "The owls had no problems raising young, so we were informally predicting a strong outward movement of young owls this winter."
And indeed, judging by numerous newspaper reports and naturalist sightings, that prediction has already come true.
In fact, if anyone has a really ingenious idea to keep them away from airports, there is at least one airport authority that would like to hear from you. One owl-plane collision has already been reported this year at Montreal-Trudeau International Airport in Dorval.
"The support from IPY and NSERC and the advances in satellite technology have given a huge impetus to what promises to be a revolution in our understanding of this key northern species," said Gauthier. That knowledge can't come soon enough, the two researchers said.
Jean-Francois Therrien's presentation "Reproductive success and long-distance movements of snowy owls: Is this top predator vulnerable to climate change" took place at the Arctic Change Conference in Quebec City on December 10.
Therrien received an NSERC Northern Internship for his work, which was also conducted as part of the NSERC IPY ArcticWOLVES project based out of Université Laval. Arctic WOLVES stands for Arctic Wildlife Observatories Linking Vulnerable Ecosystems.

DivX 7 is Coming Soon to a Computer Near You

                      

From the people that brought you high quality DivX video comes the next evolution of digital video with DivX 7 which features True HD with H.264 Video and AAC audio for a true cinematic experience.  The new DivX software will also support the .mkv container format.

DivX 7 in conjunction with popular encoding tools will compress high-quality HD video into much more manageable sizes, without sacrificing visual quality.

The goal of DivX 7 is to provide the widest range of users with powerful yet easy to use encoding tools while ensuring the compatibility among all sorts of hardware devices.

Hubble Catches Jupiter's Largest Moon Going To The 'Dark Side'

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has caught Jupiter's moon Ganymede playing a game of "peek-a-boo." In this crisp Hubble image, Ganymede is shown just before it ducks behind the giant planet.

  Ganymede completes an orbit around Jupiter every seven days. Because Ganymede's orbit is tilted nearly edge-on to Earth, it routinely can be seen passing in front of and disappearing behind its giant host, only to reemerge later.

Composed of rock and ice, Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system. It is even larger than the planet Mercury. But Ganymede looks like a dirty snowball next to Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. Jupiter is so big that only part of its Southern Hemisphere can be seen in this image.

Hubble's view is so sharp that astronomers can see features on Ganymede's surface, most notably the white impact crater, Tros, and its system of rays, bright streaks of material blasted from the crater. Tros and its ray system are roughly the width of Arizona.

The image also shows Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the large eye-shaped feature at upper left. A storm the size of two Earths, the Great Red Spot has been raging for more than 300 years. Hubble's sharp view of the gas giant planet also reveals the texture of the clouds in the Jovian atmosphere as well as various other storms and vortices.

Astronomers use these images to study Jupiter's upper atmosphere. As Ganymede passes behind the giant planet, it reflects sunlight, which then passes through Jupiter's atmosphere. Imprinted on that light is information about the gas giant's atmosphere, which yields clues about the properties of Jupiter's high-altitude haze above the cloud tops.

New Model Explains Movements Of The Moon

Two researchers from the universities of Valladolid and Alicante are developing a mathematical formula to study the rotation of the moon, taking into account its structure, which comprises a solid external layer and a fluid internal core.

Their work is part of an international study, which has come up with an improved theoretical model about the orbital and rotational dynamics of the Earth and its satellite, and which the scientific community will be able to use to obtain more precise measurements in order to aid future NASA missions to the moon.
Juan J. A. Getino, from the Applied Mathematics Department of the University of Valladolid, and Alberto Escapa, from the Applied Mathematics Department of the Higher Polytechnic School of the University of Alicante, suggest in their work that the Earth and the moon should be considered as “multi-layered” systems. In order to analyse their movements, the researchers have used Hamiltonian mechanics, a kind of classical mechanics used, among other things, to study the movements of heavenly bodies in response to gravitational effects.
“The Earth can be viewed as a three-layered system, with a solid exterior mantle, a fluid intermediary layer and a solid interior nucleus,” Getino tells SINC. The researcher points out that the new proposition applies multi-layer theories to the study of the rotation and movements of the moon, as well as its interaction with the Earth.
“The end objective of this multidisciplinary study is to develop a more complete model of the movements of the moon, to make it possible to correctly interpret the increasingly precise data we have about the distance between it and the Earth,” says Alberto Escapa.
Although based in classic mechanics, the contributions of the Spanish scientists to this study of the rotational and orbital dynamics of the moon are part of a more ambitious project based on Einstein’s general theory of relativity. In fact, the study, published recently in the journal Advances in Space Research, is being led by the relativist astronomer Sergei M. Kopeikin, from the University of Missouri, United States, and also involves the participation of other researchers from the United States, Germany, Russia and China.
Escapa points out that their proposition involves “extrapolating to the moon a mathematical model that we had previously developed in order to explain the small changes within the Earth’s rotational axis”. This model helped to improve GPS navigation systems, and in 2003 led to Getino and Escapa, along with other scientists, being awarded the European Union’s Descartes Prize for Research.
Using a laser to measure the distance between the Earth and the moon
Today, the latest improvements in laser measuring system technology (Lunar Laser Ranging) enable precise measurement of the distance between the Earth and its satellite down to almost a millimetre. Work in this area started with the Apollo era programmes more than 35 years ago, when the first corner-cube reflectors (CCR) started to be installed on the lunar surface. These devices reflect rays of light emitted by various terrestrial stations, making it possible to measure the distance between the Earth and the moon.
The measurements provided by LLR are “crucial”, according to the study, both in terms of moving forward in understanding the fundamental laws of gravitational physics, but also in improving understanding of the moon’s internal structure, as well as to help in the planning of future robotic and manned missions to the moon. The relativist theoretical model, complemented by the work of the Spanish scientists, could help to bring about progress in these fields.
NASA is weighing up the possibility of incorporating the results of this modelling into its GEODYN programme, a piece of software developed in order to analyse the orbits of satellites and estimate geodesic parameters to help improve space ship navigation, and to be able to land precisely on any part of the moon.

Ariane 5 is poised for liftoff with Eutelsat's HOT BIRD™ 9 and W2M satellites

The ELA-3 launch zone at Europe’s Spaceport welcomed its 42nd Ariane 5 today as the heavy-lift vehicle with Eutelsat’s HOT BIRD™ 9 and W2M satellites rolled out for a liftoff tomorrow evening on the final Arianespace mission of 2008.
Sunny skies greeted the Ariane 5 ECA as it departed the Final Assembly Building at 11:00 a.m. for a 2.8-km. transfer to the ELA-3 launch area. Riding atop one of two mobile launch tables available for Ariane 5 mission operations, the vehicle arrived on the launch pad 1 hr. 15 min. later, where it was secured in place.
Tomorrow’s liftoff is scheduled at the 6:51 p.m. opening of a 59-minute launch window, with the two Eutelsat satellites to be deployed during a flight lasting approximately 32 minutes.
HOT BIRD 9 is installed in the upper position of Ariane 5’s dual payload “stack,” and will be released first during the mission sequence. This spacecraft was produced by EADS Astrium and carries 64 Ku-band transponders for the broadcast of digital and new high-definition TV channels, as well as interactive services. After its deployment by Ariane 5, it will be located at Eutelsat’s premium video neighborhood orbital slot of 13 deg. East, with a coverage area extending throughout Europe, as well as to North Africa and the Middle East.
The W2M satellite, which is carried in Ariane 5’s lower passenger slot, was built by a European-Indian joint effort involving EADS Astrium and ANTRIX (the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation). W2M will be positioned at an orbital slot of 16 deg. East, and is to provide both television and radio broadcasting services for Eutelsat.
Tomorrow’s Ariane 5 mission will mark the 42nd launch of this workhorse commercial launcher, and is the sixth flight performed by Arianespace in 2008.

Ancient Soil Replenishment Technique Helps In Battle Against Global Warming

Former inhabitants of the Amazon Basin enriched their fields with charred organic materials-biochar-and transformed one of the earth's most infertile soils into one of the most productive. These early conservationists disappeared 500 years ago, but centuries later, their soil is still rich in organic matter and nutrients.

Now, scientists, environmental groups and policymakers forging the next world climate agreement see biochar not only as an important tool for replenishing soils, but as a powerful tool for combating global warming.
Christoph Steiner, a University of Georgia research scientist in the Faculty of Engineering, was a major contributor to the biochar proposal that was submitted by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification last week at the United Nations Climate Change Conference meeting in Poland. The new climate change agreement will replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
"The potential of biochar lies in its ability to sequester-capture and store-huge amounts of carbon while also displacing fossil fuel energy, effectively doubling its carbon impact," said Steiner, a soil scientist whose research in the Amazon Basin originally focused on the use of biochar as a soil amendment. At UGA's Biorefinery and Carbon Cycling Program, he now investigates the global potential of biochar to sequester carbon. He also serves as a consultant to the UNCCD, a sister program to the climate change convention.
Steiner explained that almost any kind of organic material-peanut shells, pine chips and even poultry litter-can be burned in air-tight conditions, a process called pyrolysis. The byproducts are biochar, a highly porous charcoal that helps soil retain nutrients and water, and gases and heat that can be used as energy.
But because the carbon in biochar so effectively resists degradation, it also can sequester carbon in soils for hundreds to thousands of years, effectively making it a permanent "sink"-a natural system that soaks up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Soils containing biochar made by ancient Amazon people still contain up to 70 times more carbon than surrounding soils and have a higher nutrient content. Steiner said scientists estimate biochar from agriculture and forestry residues can potentially sequester billions of tons of carbon in the world's soils.
Biochar also avoids the disadvantages of other bioenergy technologies that deplete soil organic matter, said Steiner.
"Removing crop residues for bioenergy production reduces the organic matter accumulating on agricultural fields and thus the soil organic carbon pool, which depends on constant input of decomposing plant material. In contrast, pyrolysis with biochar carbon sequestration produces renewable energy, sequesters CO2 and cycles nutrients back into agricultural fields."
This unique system ideally utilizes waste biomass, and thus does not compete with food production," said Steiner. Currently most waste biomass decomposes or is burned in the field. Both processes release carbon dioxide stored in the plant biomass-for no other use than getting rid of it. Biochar can capture up to 50 percent of the carbon stored in biomass and establishes a significant carbon sink, as long as renewable resources are used and biochar is used as a soil amendment.
To address our world's climate change dilemma, said Steiner, "We need a carbon sink in addition to greater energy efficiency and renewable energy. Acceptance of the UNCCD proposal in Poland is a first step to make carbon trading based on biochar a reality.
"This has not only consequences for mitigating climate change, but also for agricultural sustainability, and could provide a strong incentive to reduce deforestation, especially in the tropics."

LEDs And Smart Lighting Could Save Trillions Of Dollars, Spark Global Innovation

A "revolution" in the way we illuminate our world is imminent, according to a paper published this week by two professors at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Innovations in photonics and solid state lighting will lead to trillions of dollars in cost savings, along with a massive reduction in the amount of energy required to light homes and businesses around the globe, the researchers forecast.
A new generation of lighting devices based on light-emitting diodes (LEDs) will supplant the common light bulb in coming years, the paper suggests. In addition to the environmental and cost benefits of LEDs, the technology is expected to enable a wide range of advances in areas as diverse as healthcare, transportation systems, digital displays, and computer networking.
"What the transistor meant to the development of electronics, the LED means to the field of photonics. This core device has the potential to revolutionize how we use light," wrote co-authors E. Fred Schubert and Jong Kyu Kim.
Schubert is the Wellfleet Senior Constellation Professor of Future Chips at Rensselaer, and heads the university's National Science Foundation-funded Smart Lighting Center. Kim is a research assistant professor of electrical, computer, and systems engineering. The paper, titled "Transcending the replacement paradigm of solid-state lighting," will be published in the Dec. 22, 2008 issue of Optics Express.
Researchers are able to control every aspect of light generated by LEDs, allowing the light sources to be tweaked and optimized for nearly any situation, Schubert and Kim said. In general LEDs will require 20 times less power than today's conventional light bulbs, and five times less power than "green" compact fluorescent bulbs.
If all of the world's light bulbs were replaced with LEDs for a period of 10 years, Schubert and Kim estimate the following benefits would be realized:
. Total energy consumption would be reduced by 1,929.84 joules
. Electrical energy consumption would be reduced by terawatt hours
. Financial savings of $1.83 trillion
. Carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by 10.68 gigatons
. Crude oil consumption would be reduced by 962 million barrels
The number of required global power plants would be reduced by 280
With all of the promise and potential of LEDs, Schubert and Kim said it is important not to pigeonhole or dismiss smart lighting technology as a mere replacement for conventional light bulbs. The paper is a call to arms for scientists and engineers, and stresses that advances in photonics will position solid state lighting as a catalyst for unexpected, currently unimaginable technological advances.
"Deployed on a large scale, LEDs have the potential to tremendously reduce pollution, save energy, save financial resources, and add new and unprecedented functionalities to photonic devices. These factors make photonics what could be termed a benevolent tsunami, an irresistible wave, a solution to many global challenges currently faced by humanity and will be facing even more in the years to come," the researchers wrote. "Transcending the replacement paradigm will open up a new chapter in photonics: Smart lighting sources that are controllable, tunable, intelligent, and communicative."
Possible smart lighting applications include rapid biological cell identification, interactive roadways, boosting plant growth, and better supporting human circadian rhythms to reduce an individual's dependency on sleep-inducing drugs or reduce the risk of certain types of cancer.

One Laptop Per Child project reaching 600,000 children

The ultra-cheap XO computer from the One Laptop Per Child project is now being used by 600,000 children in the developing world, the ambitious project's founder Nicholas Negroponte told New Scientist in an interview yesterday.
"That's not promised machines, or machines that might be on their way, that is actual laptops in use by children in their schools and homes today," the former MIT Media Lab director said.
The XO is a small, "netbook"-sized laptop built into a very tough, clamshell casing. It runs Sugar, a Linux-based operating system developed especially for the XO, and around 30 applications that cover everything from word processing to games and music making.
Twin Wi-Fi antennas flank a rotating LCD screen, which has a low-power, black-and-white mode which can be read in direct sunlight. That's a valuable feature in places where school takes place outdoors.
The laptop's green and white livery (see image, right) is drawn from Nigeria's national flag, the president having been an early supporter of the project. The next OLPC model &endash; XO2 &endash; will be launched in 2010 (see an image of the XO2).
International interest
Users so far are spread across 31 countries, including Peru, Rwanda, and Cambodia. Palestine will be the next nation to receive a shipment.
"We have most traction in South America. The 'poster children' for the OLPC project are Uruguay and Peru - every single child in Uruguay will have a laptop by mid 2009," Negroponte says.
Those countries have taken strongly to the laptops, he said, with parents telling him they can't wait to get their hands on an XO once their children have gone to sleep.
Negroponte tells how one computer-illiterate Uruguayan teacher, worried about the prospect of laptops arriving, asked for early retirement. Once the laptops arrived, she changed her mind and asked for late retirement, instead.
"She had never had so much fun teaching. The newfound energy in the classroom, the sharp decline in discipline problems, and the engagement of the parents made her work so much more fulfilling," Negroponte says.
Dream come true
Negroponte feels the OLPC project's aims have been vindicated, despite deep scepticism from the computer industry that its goals were any more than a pipedream.
"When we first said we could build a laptop for $100 it was viewed as unrealistic and so 'anti-market' and so 'anti' the current laptops which at the time were around $1000 each," Negroponte said.
"It was viewed as pure bravado - but look what happened: the netbook market has developed in our wake." The project's demands for cheaper components such as keyboards, and processors nudged the industry into finding ways to cut costs, he says. "What started off as a revolution became a culture."
Making connections
In fact the biggest challenge comes from the immature telecommunications networks in places like Africa, where web connections can cost 40 times what they would in the US.
"We try to piggyback on the cellular network, or drop in a satellite dish. That way we are not limited to the urban areas," he says. When the project strikes a deal with a nation to buy a new set of laptops, it insists they purchase satellite dishes too, if needed.
Negroponte won't reveal how much governments are paying, though. All he will say is that prices vary depending on a nation's ability to pay, and that charitable donations help too.
Some are provided by the Give One, Get One programme that since 2007 has let US residents buy an OX laptop at a price that also provides one for a child in the developing world. That programme has raised $35 million so far, and was recently rolled out worldwide.
Theft proof
Handing out laptops is not always easy. In Colombia last week Negroponte and colleagues needed a 200-troop bodyguard to supply laptops and a satellite dish to a school in a region controlled by the FARC guerrillas.
Were the laptops to be stolen, though, they would not be of much use to the thieves. XOs are programmed to "brick" themselves &endash; stop working &endash; if they do not check in with a classroom's local wireless network after a couple of days.
That network is not a conventional one held together by a central router. The laptops form a "mesh network", a decentralised arrangement that forms whenever a collection of the laptops are close enough to one another.
That makes sharing files and media between XOs easier - for example, allowing the whole of online information source Wikipedia to be copied and shared among a classroom's machines for all to use.
'Laptops for democracy'
Negroponte believes that empowering children and their parents with the educational resources offered by computers and the internet will lead to informed decisions that improve democracy.
Indeed, it has led to some gentle ribbing between himself and his brother: John Negroponte - currently deputy secretary of state in the outgoing Bush administration and the first ever director of national intelligence at the National Security Agency.
"I often joke with John that he can bring democracy his way - and I'll bring it mine," he says.

Long-sought carbonate minerals found on Mars

Carbonates minerals, which form in the presence of water and have previously been found only in trace amounts on Mars, have been spotted in outcrops of rock on the Red Planet, new observations reveal.
Since acidic conditions can prevent carbonates from forming, the discovery suggests that the minerals were created in neutral-pH water that might have provided a cosy habitat for life.
On Earth, oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and deposit it as carbonate rock. But although some evidence points to past water oceans on Mars, only small amounts of carbonates have been found there - in Martian meteorites that landed on Earth and in atmospheric dust and bright soils on the planet.
In 2004, iron-rich minerals and sulphate salts observed by NASA's Opportunity rover suggested an explanation: any oceans were too acidic for carbonates to form.
Indeed, a study in 2006 suggested that Mars may have gone through an acidic phase, triggered by active volcanism, after an early period in which it had a denser atmosphere and large bodies of neutral-pH water on its surface.
Now, a study led by Bethany Ehlmann of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, reports the discovery of magnesium carbonate rocks in a region of Mars called Nili Fossae, as well as smaller carbonate deposits in a couple of other sites (see map). The subtle spectral signature of carbonates was identified by the high-resolution CRISM spectrometer on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
'Fairly spectacular'
The carbonates in Nili Fossae are found in rocky outcrops that each cover no more than 10 square kilometres across. The minerals are thought to have formed when liquid water - either from subsurface groundwater or from shallow, ephemeral lakes on the surface - came into contact with the mineral olivine.
"In some places, like the Opportunity landing site, Terra Meridiani, it's clear that acid waters dominated the region," Ehlmann told New Scientist. "Because we hadn't seen carbonate bearing rocks before, we extrapolated this could be true over much of the planet."
"But at least in pockets, like where we see the carbonate, it suggests waters were mostly neutral to alkaline," she says. Such waters represent "a different sort of aqueous environment - potentially a habitat for micro-organisms - on ancient Mars".
Mark Bullock of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, is impressed with the results. "This is a fairly spectacular paper," he told New Scientist. "[These rocks] aren't the massive layered limestones we see on Earth, but they are extensive enough to suggest that neutral pH waters in that location were necessary for their formation."
Complex history
What's more, the carbonates appear in rocks that seem to be younger than those in which the sulphates seen by Opportunity formed. "What this means is that Mars didn't just go from wet and pH neutral to drier and more acidic as it got colder," Bullock says.
"There must have been regional climate and chemical conditions that varied in time and space," he says, adding that this would occur as the tilt of Mars's spin axis changed over tens of thousands of years, a wobble caused by the lack of a massive moon to stabilise the planet. "I think it just goes to show that Mars has probably had a pretty wild climate history, what with the pole swinging all over the place."
Joshua Bandfield of the University of Washington in Seattle agrees: "The new results add another interesting piece of information which supports a more complex model for the history of the planet."
Hidden carbonates?
The researchers say it is possible, but unlikely, that high concentrations of carbonates are hidden under dust or lava on Mars.
"We're going to keep looking as more CRISM data comes down," says Ehlmann. "[But] I think it's unlikely that we will find another big, regional unit like we see in Nili Fossae."
Bullock agrees: "I think there must have been limited times and limited places on Mars where carbonate rocks could have formed, perhaps at the bottom of a lake that persisted for a while."
Target site
Bullock adds that Nili Fossae "seems like a very compelling new candidate landing site for the Mars Science Laboratory."
In fact, Nili Fossae was initially considered as a possible landing site for the giant rover because it contains clays that must have formed in water. Intriguingly, it also might be a source of methane gas detected in the Martian atmosphere that might have a biological origin.
Technical glitches recently forced NASA to postpone MSL's launch from 2009 to 2011. That means researchers will reconsider the question of where to land the rover in about a year, says MSL project scientist John Grotzinger of Caltech.
"However, the reason the Nili landing site was not advanced was because it is too high in altitude - too risky for landing," he told New Scientist.
The massive lander needs to travel through as much of Mars's thin atmosphere as possible to slow down enough to land safely, ruling out sites, such as Nili Fossae, that lie at high altitudes. "Unfortunately, this constraint will also apply in 2011," says Grotzinger.

Where Did Venus's Water Go?

Venus Express has made the first detection of an atmospheric loss process on Venus's day-side. Last year, the spacecraft revealed that most of the lost atmosphere escapes from the night-side. Together, these discoveries bring planetary scientists closer to understanding what happened to the water on Venus, which is suspected to have once been as abundant as on Earth.

   The spacecraft's magnetometer instrument (MAG) detected the unmistakable signature of hydrogen gas being stripped from the day-side. “This is a process that was believed to be happening at Venus but this is the first time we measured it,” says Magda Delva, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, who leads the investigation.

Thanks to its carefully chosen orbit, Venus Express is strategically positioned to investigate this process; the spacecraft travels in a highly elliptical path sweeping over the poles of the planet.  

Water is a key molecule on Earth because it makes life possible. With Earth and Venus approximately the same size, and having formed at the same time, astronomers believe that both planets likely began with similar amounts of the precious liquid. Today, however, the proportions on each planet are extremely different. Earth’s atmosphere and oceans contain 100 000 times the total amount of water on Venus. In spite of the low concentration of water on Venus Delva and colleagues found that some 2x1024 hydrogen nuclei, a constituent atom of the water molecule, were being lost every second from Venus's day-side.

Last year, the Analyser of Space Plasma and Energetic Atoms (ASPERA) on board Venus Express showed that there was a great loss of hydrogen and oxygen on the night-side. Roughly twice as many hydrogen atoms as oxygen atoms were escaping. Because water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, the observed escape indicates that water is being broken up in the atmosphere of Venus.

The Sun not only emits light and heat into space, it constantly spews out solar wind, a stream of charged particles. This solar wind carries electrical and magnetic fields throughout the Solar System and ‘blows’ past the planets.

Unlike Earth, Venus does not generate a magnetic field. This is significant because Earth’s magnetic field protects its atmosphere from the solar wind. At Venus, however, the solar wind strikes the upper atmosphere and carries off particles into space. Planetary scientists think that the planet has lost part of its water in this way over the four-and-a-half-thousand million years since the planet’s birth.

“We do see water escaping from the night-side but the question remains, how much has been lost in the past in this way,” says Stas Barabash, Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna and Principal Investigator of ASPERA, that looked at night-side data.

The discovery takes scientists a step towards understanding the details, but it does not provide the last piece of the puzzle. To be certain that the hydrogen is coming from water, Delva and colleagues must also detect the loss of oxygen atoms on the day-side and verify that there are approximately half as many leaving Venus as hydrogen.

So far, this has not been possible. “I keep looking at the magnetometer data but so far I can’t see the signature of oxygen escaping on the day-side,” says Delva.

It also highlights a new mystery. “These results show that there could be at least twice as much hydrogen in the upper atmosphere of Venus than we thought,” says Delva. The detected hydrogen ions could exist in atmospheric regions high above the surface of the planet; but the source of these regions is unknown.

So like a true lady, Venus still retains some of her mystery.