marți, 4 ianuarie 2011

New Cracks Discovered in Space Shuttle's Fuel Tank

NASA has institute individual diminutive cracks in the expanse shuttle's outside render tank, the expanse authority said Thursday.  

Discovery was regular to verify soured Nov. 5 on its test assignment to the International Space Station, a grace that was suspended until Nov. 30 mass brainstorm of a render leak, and delayed to Feb after cracks were institute in the render tank. weekday salutation NASA said it had institute newborn cracks in the tank, though these haw not advance to delays. 

Technicians in the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s President Space Center in Florida institute the diminutive cracks mass the stylish ammo of X-ray ikon scans of expanse shuttle Discovery's outside render tank.

NASA has not still definite whether the newest cracks, perceived on the tops of threesome "stringers" on commission 6, which is on the oppositeness lateral of the cell from Discovery, will change forthcoming plans. Stringers are metal strips between the liquefied gas and liquefied gas parts of the render tank, fashioned to wage structural integrity.

Space Shuttle Program managers are gathering weekday salutation to end whether investigating and psychotherapy inform modifications are necessary on whatever of the stringers. If required, modifications would begin Jan 3. But modify if these stringers order strengthening, the schedule for start Feb 3 belike won't be affected, Kyle Herring, expanse shuttle information open concern officer, told FoxNews.com.

Similar issues hit strained start attempts during digit preceding shuttle missions, both in 2009. In the past, crews hit restored cracks in the outside cell by removing the unsmooth metal and exchange it with a "doubler" -- a twice-as-thick country -- before exchange the sparkle insulation. 

When the cell is ready, Discovery module control an 11-day cater assignment to the International Space Station to have a robot mechanism supporter for the send gathering and a newborn hardware shack for the orbiting lab. The equipment has already visaged downbound a program of setbacks, including a unify of pedal leaks, an electrical flaw and, most recently, unhelpful weather.

The STS-133 assignment module be Discovery's noble finish in expanse before existence old along with the rest of NASA's shuttle fast in 2011.

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NASA Scientist Publishes 'Colonizing the Red Planet,' a How-To Guide

A manned assignment to Mars would be the large undertaking in the story of the manlike race. And digit Negro knows how to attain it a reality. In fact, he meet wrote the aggregation on it -- literally.

Joel Levine, grownup investigate individual with NASA's uranologist Research Center and co-chair of NASA's Human Exploration of Mars Science Analysis Group, meet publicised "The Human Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet." The aggregation reads same a who's who of Mars assignment science, featuring senators, astronauts, astrophysicists, geologists and more on effort to Mars, studying its region and climate, the psychological and scrutiny personalty on the gathering and another details.

There's modify a country detailing the power of stimulate on Mars, should NASA endeavor to create a imperishable body there.

"For the terminal threesome years, I've been co-chairing a commission of most 30 U.S. and river scientists, reaching up with a blueprint, purely from a technological perspective, of humanity's persona on Mars," Levine told FoxNews.com. He was asked to place unitedly a primary edition of the Journal of Cosmology exploring the topic, which was meet publicised as the newborn book. 

"The United States of USA is the exclusive land that crapper do this successfully correct now," he said. And to rest the subject cheater of the world, he argued, we requirement to do this. And it's quite possible, the aggregation notes; after all, a activate to Mars isn't modify a long one.

"The activate to Mars would verify on the visit of 220 life using today’s chemical feat technology," writes Steven A. Hawley, a past traveler today with the department of physics and physics at the University of Kansas, in a chapter on  the challenges and sacrifices of the activate to Mars. He suggests either a brief continuance or individual continuance meet before the convey trip. "The individual opencast assignment would enable momentous science, but also guy the gathering to greater venture if systems don’t duty as planned."

But disregarding of whether a body is initially established, Levine is aroused -- and genre -- most a activate to Mars. "When we do this, the manlike species module be a two-planet species for the prototypal instance ever," he said. A activate to Mars would unstoppered up innumerous revelations and mayhap respond digit of the large questions power today seeks to answer: is there chronicle elsewhere in the universe?

"The see for chronicle right the Earth is digit of the key questions in every of science," he told FoxNews.com, "and of every the objects in the Solar System, Mars is the most likely." 

Many scientists put that chronicle haw subsist on the flushed follower today in the modify of microorganisms, and the aggregation concludes that a manned assignment could rattling substantially respond that discourse for erst and all. "All of the articles here hold that yes, it's doable that when we go to Mars we module encounter microorganism at the opencast or beneath the surface."

Another discourse Levine believes the assignment module respond deals with the fantastic story of Mars -- which he titled the most intriguing, and the most unclear follower in the solar system. Today Mars has no liquefied liquid and a very, rattling anorectic region -- it's same the Earth's region at 100,000 feet, he said. Yet we hit very, rattling brawny grounds that its opencast utilised to be awninged with water. What happened to it all?

"What harmful circumstance led to Mars feat from an Earth-like follower to a rattling barren follower today?" he asked. The Mars assignment would beam humans there to think that, and wager if there's a warning in the follower for the forthcoming of Earth.

Levine has a generalized timeline in nous for the mission, which he hopes to start by 2040. He believes we could start the missions farther sooner, still -- if we could give to. Tragically, the field difficulty for effort humans to Mars isn't antiquity newborn spacecraft, furthering science, or inventing newborn technologies, he says. 

"NASA's budget is 18 1000000000 a year, and I don't conceive we crapper earnestly organisation a start until 2040" presented those funds, he said. "If NASA's budget went up 3 1000000000 a year, or 5 1000000000 a year, we could do it in half the time."

But Levine presents a resolution for that difficulty in his aggregation as well, something unexampled for NASA: advertising.

"The suasion is marketing to assorted corporations and professed sports leagues for advertising, which is something NASA never does -- it's a full newborn scheme organisation for finance what has to be the large undertaking in the story of the manlike race."

Read the primary edition of the Journal of Cosmology here.

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The Science Breakthroughs That 2011 May Bring

From discovering the so-called God particle and confirming the cosmos of an Earth-like exoplanet to discernment more most the mentality and modify process a ordinal field of life, the power possibilities for 2011 are awe-inspiring.

The Higgs boson – a particle so essential to power that it's been dubbed "the God particle" – haw become discover of hiding in 2011.

This basic particle, intellection to provide accumulation to every particles, has been theorized since 1964 but never detected.

"If nature is category to us, we module encounter it incoming year," said particle physicist Christoph Rembser, of the dweller Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, where the world's maximal corpuscle smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, went online in Sept 2008. With the corpuscle beauty up and running, Rembser said physicists hit everything they requirement to notice and manoeuvre the particle. [Optimism Grows on Finding 'God Particle' in 2011]

A $10 meg accolade to goad the creation of original neurotechnologies for the manlike mentality could entry as presently as incoming year. The prototypal doable contest strength be a Neuroeducation X Prize that seeks to dissect acquisition in the mentality and yet provide a increase to the brains of students, or a Paralysis X Prize that promotes feat of embody functions in spinal cord-injured patients. Future X Prizes could modify face far-out ideas much as realistic telepathy, allowing humans to effortlessly programme with computers using exclusive their brains, and small X Challenge rewards could intend conception for mentality issues much as Alzheimer's disease.

The try is hardback by the X Prize Foundation, which successfully spurred on the prototypal clannish voyage with the Ansari X Prize and has also launched the $30 meg Google Lunar X Prize for teams racing to realty a mechanism on the moon. Similarly, the $10 meg Progressive Auto X Prize fresh awarded money to the most fuel-efficient vehicles from among more than 100 competitors.

Now the X Prize Foundation hopes the attractiveness of bounteous rewards crapper draw more clannish money and talent to the try of extrication the earnest mentality puzzles visaged by modern-day researchers.

Kosta Grammatis doesn't wager the cyberspace as a wealth as a manlike correct for the zillions of grouping who ease demand admittance to digit of the most coercive tools of the 21st century. That's ground he launched a effort to acquire a equipment and advise it to a newborn itinerary where it crapper wage liberated cyberspace admittance for digit or more nonindustrial countries. His noncommercial organization, titled A Human Right, is hunting for $150,000 in donations finished the online place buythissatellite.org so it crapper place unitedly a playing plan.

The direct acquisition is the Terrestar-1 satellite, which is owned by a consort that filed for insolvency endorsement in October. Grammatis hopes yet to work a big bounteous customer much as Google or Richard Branson to backwards his effort for Terrestar-1, and then to re-park the equipment above a location with slummy cyberspace admittance – perhaps above island New Guinea or modify Africa.

To ready the activeness funded, Grammatis envisions leasing discover high-speed bandwidth to telecommunications companies, modify patch providing liberated cyberspace connections at modify speeds. If a earnest send sponsor crapper be found, countenance for a doable advise on this organisation in 2011.

In October, researchers declared the brainstorm of the world's ordinal colossus virus, dubbed CroV. This virus, which infects single-cell marine creatures, is thoughtful large cod to the filler of its genome – roughly 730,000 humble pairs, or transmitted antiquity blocks, more than threefold the filler of the maximal famous "normal" virus. Mimivirus, the power of colossus viruses so far, has 1.2 meg humble pairs.

More colossus viruses are probable on their artefact to existence found. Mimivirus and CroV are exclusive extreme relatives of apiece other, suggesting that others exist, according to Matthias chemist who described CroV for his degree treatise at the University of nation Columbia. Gunnar Bratbak, of the University of metropolis in Norway, addicted that his work has unaccompanied and is studying added colossus viruses.

Viruses, which rely on the machinery of pussy cells to make and so aren't thoughtful "alive," are not included in the threesome domains of life: eukaryotes, prokaryotes and the most ancient, archaea. However, the astonishing table of these colossus viruses' genomes invest them with features kindred to cells and earmark them to endeavor a more astir persona in replicating themselves.

"Viruses are not exclusive a 'process' that assistance phylogenesis by reordering genes around, but they are also evolving and obeying the aforementioned laws of phylogenesis as the another domains," Bratbak wrote. "Thus the more we learn, the harder it gets to delimitate 'domain' without including viruses among them. I am not trusty we are there yet."

Plenty of claims hit been prefabricated most uncovering what haw be an Earth-like exoplanet – digit that's rocky, most Earth’s filler and orbiting its grapheme within the liveable regularize (where it's not likewise blistering or likewise algid to uphold chronicle as we undergo it).

earth-like follower right of our solar system, that every depends on what digit effectuation by definitively and positively," physicist Steven Vogt of the University of California, Santa Cruz, told LiveScience in an e-mail.

"I would debate (and indeed hit argued) that we hit already finished this, with the declared spotting of GJ 581g," said Vogt, who led the aggroup that institute the planet.

Gliese 581g, digit of sextet worlds orbiting a grapheme in the plan Libra, was declared as the prototypal Earth-like follower where chronicle strength exist. While Vogt stands by the discovery, whatever power groups discourse the finding. For instance, a assemble of astronomers, led by Michel Mayor of the Genf Observatory in Switzerland, performed a follow-up enquiry in an endeavor to support the cosmos of Gliese 581g and said they were unable to.

Even with Mayor's aggroup and Vogt's aggroup disagreeable to support Gliese 581g, "it haw verify added flavour or digit to rattling know, so I wait we won't wager some doable commendation (or refutation) for added assemblage or two," Vogt said. "In the meantime, we are hornlike at impact not exclusive assembling more accumulation on this system, but on others that haw consent kindred potentially liveable planets."

The uranologist mission, which launched in outflow 2009 and whose content is to see for Earth-like worlds, hasn't been low artefact daylong sufficiency to support liveable Earth-like exoplanets, Vogt said.

Gregory Laughlin of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and prophet Arbesman, a computational scientist at altruist Medical School, are more optimistic, and specific. "In the time decades, the sort of famous extrasolar planets has ballooned into the hundreds, and with it the belief that the brainstorm of the prototypal Earth-like extrasolar follower is not farther off," they indite in an online investigate article publicised on arXiv.org. Using statistical analyses supported on time exoplanet discoveries, "we prognosticate the brainstorm of the prototypal Earth-like follower to be declared in the prototypal half of 2011, with the likeliest fellow existence primeval May 2011," they wrote.

More info on how they came to the closing crapper be institute at Arbesman's blog.

So what's the point? It’s a ontogeny discernment of the Byzantine interactions between our genes and the environment, researchers say. New genome sequencing techniques earmark researchers to patch wider and deeper nets in the see for transmitted course to behavior. Close think crapper expose how early-life experiences or danger to destined situations crapper impact those genes. Even your parents' experiences could attain a disagreement in how your genes are expressed.

It's the first of a newborn era, said king Goldman, a geneticist at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, who authored the think on the biology of impulsivity.

"To create a meg nucleotides of polymer ordering costs most 25 cents, which is meet an incredible number," nihilist told LiveScience. "What added in chronicle is that cheap?"

Don't wait a ultimate insight in 2011 – it's highly implausible that anyone is feat to conceive THE incurvation factor or THE schizophrenia gene. But medicine researchers feature they're gradually piecing unitedly the gene-environment puzzle, and newborn clues could hap some day.

"We rattling strength refer newborn genes and newborn proteins that are participating in incurvation that we never intellection to countenance at before," said Srijan Sen, a specialist at the University of Michigan.

"That's event a lowercase taste in psychosis and autism... In that way, I conceive subverter things could happen."

A transgenic salmon that grows to nutrition filler in half the instance of mediocre salmon is poised to embellish the prototypal genetically restricted birdlike authorised by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for consumption. But despite a program of past bureau panels uncovering that it does not bear some newborn danger to manlike health, the AquaBounty Technologies seek ease faces critique from experts and the danger of lawsuits from consumer organizations.

The commission hearings institute the AquaBounty salmon to be safe, supported on studies that whatever critics hit argued participating likewise some fish; the bureau has not indicated whether it module order added studies before judgement on the panels’ recommendation. The environmental risks of the transgenic salmon escaping their interior facilities and mingling with disorderly salmon were also thoughtful minimal.

Some economists hit argued that the bureau also needs to study how the AquaBounty salmon could encourage an treatment of the aquaculture business that raises farm-bred fish. That advise could attain salmon cheaper and earmark for a better fasting among consumers on the nonnegative side, but also haw pipage the drawing of disorderly seek required to take the ontogeny drawing of farm salmon.

Evidence of society – scholarly activity characteristics of a portion assemble – among animals is mounting, and investigate is continuing to add refinement to our discernment of how animals see from digit added and how birdlike culture, same manlike culture, evolves.

Within the incoming year, Diana Reiss of Hunter College in New royalty City, and traitor Ofer Tchernichovski at the City College of New royalty organisation to start on investigate that could show, among another things, how dolphins see newborn whistles – the sounds by which they transmit – and how they combine them into their possess ethnic interactions.

A newborn empiric grouping the digit scientists are nonindustrial module earmark a ethnic assemble of dolphins at the National Aquarium in metropolis to interact with a contact concealment sticking onto the surround of the tank, patch identifying the whistles the animals make, in near-real time.

When asked if findings from birdlike society stingy humans are not unequalled in that regard, Tchernichovski balked, occupation it a "trick question."

"The more engrossing power is the power using birdlike models to see ourselves and to see animals and to wager [if] there is a continuum between them," he told LiveScience.

In past years, body founder modify has emptied discover bee colonies in North USA and Europe, and chytrid flora infections are blamed for aeroplane deaths and declining populations on individual continents. Most recently, white-nose syndrome has been decimating asleep bats as it radiates superficial from a explore nearby Albany, N.Y., where it was prototypal seen Feb 2006.

Scientists are piecing unitedly the causes for these birdlike plagues, though some questions remain. In October, researchers reportable in the book PLoS ONE that a viral-fungal attach aggroup was probable behindhand body collapse, decent more fatal when the virus and flora pussy the aforementioned bee together.

As for the wound incident feat aeroplane deaths, a think publicised in the book Science in 2009 planned that the communicable disease, chytridimycosis, interferes with electrolyte instrumentation over the skin, feat cardiac collar and death. Separately, researchers hit advisable that the flora answerable was transported around the sphere by the change in individual frogs, which were utilised in maternity tests during the prototypal conception of the 20th century.

The flora behindhand white-nose syndrome haw ingest a kindred execution to blackball bats, according to a think publicised in Nov in the book BMC Biology. "In the incoming some years, it's pat we module be healthy to found just how the flora is ending the bats, and that noesis haw sure support us become up with the most trenchant direction options," said Apostle Cryan, a think scientist and wink ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

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BofA Scrambling Amid WikiLeaks Threat, Report Says

A aggroup of up to 20 Bank of USA officials, led by the honcho venture officer, doc Thompson, hit been reviewing thousands of documents amid a danger that it haw be a direct of WikiLeaks, The New royalty Times reportable on Sunday.

The administrator of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, previously said he had witting to "take down" a field U.S. slope and expose an "ecosystem of corruption" from accumulation from an executive's computer.

Bank of USA has been reviewing cases in which some computers were forfeited and was hunting for signs that its systems strength hit been compromised, the production reportable in its electronic edition.

The slope has hired consulting concern Booz comedienne noblewoman to support control the analyse and has wanted advice from individual crowning accumulation firms, the inform said.

Bank of America's interior analyse has overturned up no grounds to hold Assange's verify that he has a hornlike drive, the production reported.

In December, Bank of USA said it would not impact payments witting for WikiLeaks, which has furious U.S. polity with the accumulation promulgation of U.S. smooth cables.

Bank of USA connected a ontogeny assemble of business services companies, including MasterCard, PayPal and Visa Europe, that are restricting payments to the orbicular methodicalness that has said its incoming super writing promulgation module be slope information.

WikiLeaks has said it module promulgation documents primeval this assemblage that module saucer to "unethical practices" at a field U.S. bank, widely intellection to be Bank of America.

Bank of USA was not directly acquirable for comment.

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Verizon to Showcase Google-Powered 4G Phones

Verizon Wireless is due this hebdomad to exhibit soured individual devices supercharged by Google's Android code for its newborn 4G network, The Wall Street Journal reportable Monday.

On Thursday, at the period Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the U.S.'s maximal wireless traveler plans to shew products including smartphones prefabricated by Samsung Electronics, Motorola, HTC and LG Electronics and at small digit paper computer, according to a mortal old with the plans. They would be the prototypal 4G phones from Verizon and are due to separate on Google's Android operative system, this mortal said.

The advise underscores the grandness of the digit companies' relation modify as reflection mounts that Verizon module intend to substance the iPhone this year.

Verizon Wireless, which is together owned by Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group, has aggressively marketed Google-powered phones, as the digit companies hit wanted to furniture AT&T's inner stop on Apple's market-leading iPhone.

In December, Verizon said in a Twitter communication that Android and its newborn 4G assist are same "peanut butter and chocolate." The newborn fourth-generation wireless profession promises super-fast band service, aiming to attain it easier to check ambulatory video, among another things.

Verizon Communications Chief Executive Ivan Seidenberg module attain a tone style at the show, where the consort is attractive a booth for the prototypal time, which module feature whatever quaternary dozen partners, including smartphone makers, defect makers and consumer-electronics companies.

While grouping old with the concern hit said Verizon Wireless is due to intend the iPhone as primeval as the prototypal lodge of 2011, Apple has still to delude 4G products.

In September, Seidenberg said, "Hopefully, at whatever point, Apple module intend with the program." At the time, Apple declined to comment.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal.

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Florida Man Says He'll Live Among Lions for 30 Days

A Florida Negro says he's feat to pay the incoming period experience in a fenced insertion with digit individual lions.

James Jablon of Spring Hill told WTSP-TV that he hopes the stunt module improve money for his wildlife center, Wildlife Rehabilitation of Hernando.

Jablon entered the lions' habitation Saturday. He says he's feat to rest on fodder nearby the lions, titled Lea and Ed, and take when they eat.

He says he's also feat to physique a locate to rest and conceal in the trees in the enclosure, in housing the lions fisticuffs with apiece other. His undertaking is existence streamed springy online finished Jan. 31.

About 100 animals springy at the edifice most 40 miles (65 kilometers) northerly of Tampa. It was started for autochthonous wildlife needing scrutiny treatment, but Jablon says he's today existence asked to wage homes for foreign pets.

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FRG Denies Secret Spy Project With U.S.

Germany's aerospace edifice denied weekday that it is employed with the U.S. on a $270 meg high-tech info wrecker program, demand that its plans for a high-resolution optical equipment hit purely technological and section uses.

U.S. State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks and revealed by Norse regular Aftenposten feature FRG connected a partnership with the U.S. to create a equipment intelligence information that was presented as a advertizement enterprise, but is actually separate by the Teutonic info assist and the Teutonic Aerospace Center, DLR.

German Aerospace Center spokesman Andreas Schuetz said that much a send for a high-resolution optical equipment has been in communicating for the time digit eld low the study HIROS.

"HIROS is neither a wrecker satellite, nor a info project," Schuetz said. He insisted that the send was to be utilised exclusive for polity purposes, "for warning crisis direction during uncolored catastrophes and for technological uses."

He refused to provide some boost details, locution the organisation was ease in the send initiate and could not be discussed.

According to the cables, dispatched in 2009 and terminal year, the satellites were to be in locate by 2013, but it wasn't country if the resource for the send had been secured.

The cables from the U.S. Embassy in songster are among a treasure of 250,000 unexpurgated smooth documents that secret-spilling place WikiLeaks has been making public. They were posted online by Aftenposten, which said terminal period it had obtained every the documents.

Mitchell Moss, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in songster refused to interpret on the cables, citing U.S. State Department contract that they are ease thoughtful classified.

The cables feature the send had been feat exertion with Germany's dweller Union partners, especially France, which was to be strictly excluded from the project. They advert land efforts to prevent the offering as "fierce and continual cod to its possibleness rivalry with land industry."

The land Foreign Ministry refused to interpret on reportable land state to the equipment wrecker program, locution in its tralatitious weekday online briefing that "we support null attributed to polity and land diplomats in documents revealed by the WikiLeaks site."

Germany's Defense Ministry, which was also cited in the cables as existence participating in the project, had no unmediated comment.

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Rare 'Panda Cow' Born, May Sell for $30,000

A thin picture kine with markings kindred to a procyonid assume was dropped on a farm in Federal Colorado.

The so-called "panda cow" dropped in Larimer County is intellection to be digit of exclusive most 24 in the world.

The (Loveland) Reporter-Herald reports the phallic calfskin titled Ben was dropped weekday morning. His care is a Lowline beef cow.

Farmer Chris Jessen raises picture kine and also owns a picture kangaroo on his plaything farm.

The picture procyonid kine is the termination of transmitted manipulation. A albescent track encircles the animal's midsection, and the kine has a albescent grappling with black ovals around the eyes, gift it a panda-like appearance.

The mini-cattle are bred solely as pets. Jessen says procyonid calves crapper delude for $30,000.

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Spirit Rover businessman Seven Years On Mars, Still Stuck

As folks here on Earth evaluation the lawmaking of added year, digit NASA robots a concern absent are creeping up on a bounteous mark of their own: heptad eld on the opencast of Mars.

The golf-cart-size rover Spirit landed on Mars on Jan. 4, 2004. Its twin, Opportunity, impact the planet's flushed soil threesome weeks later, on Jan. 25. The rovers were originally questionable to agency around the Martian opencast for a plain 90 days, hunting for grounds of the planet's time liquid activity, but both hit farther outlasted their warranties.

In 2009, however, Spirit got unfree in fleecy smoothen and in March 2010, the rover obstructed act with Earth. Still, assignment scientists conceive the intrepid rover haw consequence up in the incoming some months. Meanwhile, Opportunity is ease feat strong, making its slow, stabilize artefact toward a huge crevice titled Endeavour.

In their nearly 2,500 life on the Martian surface, the digit rovers hit essentially denaturized scientists' discernment of Mars, uncovering lots of grounds that the Red Planet was erst a such wetter, device place. Spirit and Opportunity hit also sealed the artefact for forthcoming rover missions by investigating discover technologies and display meet what is possible, researchers said. [Q & A with Mars rover trainer Evangelist Callas]

And, on a more nonfigurative level, the rovers hit brought Mars fireman than ever before, making added concern reachable to scientists and laypeople alike.

"In constituent to every the technological discoveries, these rovers hit prefabricated Mars a old place," Evangelist Callas, Mars Exploration Rover (MER) send trainer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told SPACE.com. "Mars is today our neighborhood."

Beginning with NASA's Mariner 9 satellite in the 1970s, binary orbiters hit perceived grounds that liquefied liquid erst flowed on the Martian surface. Spirit and Opportunity were dispatched to analyse these clues, to countenance for more, and to place everything into a meliorate geological context, researchers said.

The six-wheeled rovers realised every of this, and more. Both robots institute minerals that modify in the proximity of liquid — solidified grounds that areas around their disparate construction sites had erst been immersed. [Photos From Spirit and Opportunity]

"We were dispatched there low the paradigm, 'Follow the water,' to encounter the grounds for dewy conditions," MER help capital policeman Ray Arvidson, of pedagogue University in St. Louis, told SPACE.com. "And we've finished that."

Most of that grounds points to a urinator Mars zillions of eld ago. But whatever of Spirit's past discoveries — prefabricated after the rover got unfree in fleecy smoothen in 2009 — declare that liquefied liquid haw hit trickled crossways the Martian opencast such more recently, perhaps meet hundreds of thousands of eld ago.

Spirit's correct face rotate obstructed employed in 2006, impelling assignment scientists to intend the rover sweptback instead. The rover belike would not hit gotten cragfast in the smoothen — where it relic today — if every sextet wheels had been employed properly, coloratura said.

But the wonky rotate evidenced something of a blessing. It dug a alter depression finished the Martian grime as Spirit chugged along. In 2007, digit of Spirit's drag-furrows unclothed underground deposits of clean silica, which forms when blistering liquid reacts with rocks.

Spirit thusly unearthed compelling grounds of hydrothermal systems on Mars, perhaps kindred to the geysers of river National Park, settled primarily in the U.S. land of Wyoming, with sections that modify into Montana and Idaho. The encounter was intriguing, suggesting that super amounts of forcefulness —possibly life-sustaining forcefulness — erst coursed finished whatever Martian environments.

"Not exclusive was there liquefied liquid on Mars, but there were forcefulness sources coinciding with that liquefied water," coloratura said. "So you hit a grouping that could potentially hold an ecosystem."

Spirit and Opportunity were apiece fashioned to terminal most threesome months on the Martian surface, and to movement most 0.6 miles (1 kilometer). Spirit lasted more than sextet years, and could ease consequence up. To date, it has place most 4.8 miles (7.7 km) on its odometer, NASA officials said.

Opportunity has been peregrination for nearly heptad eld now, concealment most 16.5 miles (26.5 km) as of New December, scientists hit said.

"You intend what you clear for," Arvidson said. "They're meet well-made dweller vehicles that hit been good proven before launch."

Arvidson said that conception of the rovers' heritage module be their large longness and the solidified field that produced them, which should be elucidative for forthcoming rover missions.

"In cost of field accomplishments, we've ordered the forbid so high," he said. "These vehicles are so farther discover of warranty, and they've cosmopolitan so far."

The rovers are also investigating and employed to front technologies for forthcoming rover missions, including NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) — also famous as Curiosity — which is regular to impact the flushed soil in August 2012.

Curiosity's line grace software, for example, was proven prototypal on Spirit and Opportunity, coloratura said. Mission scientists also fresh unexploded Opportunity with code titled Aegis, which allows the rover to analyse finished its possess images, encounter engrossing targets and verify follow-up pictures, free from the rover aggroup backwards on Earth.

"That code is feat to be line for MSL as well," coloratura said.

The crippled, unfree Spirit went silent on March 22, 2010, after imperfectness to move into a function that would bias its solar panels toward the solarise over the instruction of the Martian winter. But today outflow has arrived on Mars, and the rover aggroup is retentive discover wish that Spirit module hearty up, consequence up and analyse in.

"We're perception now," coloratura said. "We've been perception every day."

If Spirit does snap back, it crapper move to attain priceless observations modify patch bogged downbound in the dirt, scientists said.

For example, researchers wish to road the broadcasting communication from a stationary Spirit, using the rover's shitting as a agent for the turning of Mars, coloratura said. Scientists could thusly intend rattling fine measurements of the planet's rotation, which could support them amount discover how bounteous Mars' set is — and perhaps expose another essential details.

"If we wager a slosh, we crapper verify whether it's a solidified or a liquefied core, and that would be a really, rattling key uncovering for Mars," coloratura said.

Of course, there is no indorse that Spirit module consequence up. The Martian solarise module be at its strongest in March 2011, so if the rover has not risen from its slumber by then, the team's optimism module probable wane.

Despite continuing to boldly trek crossways the opencast of Mars, Opportunity is display whatever signs of its modern age. Its robotic limb is rheumatic in digit joint, coloratura said, though the another quaternary joints are ease employed well. And in the season of 2008, the casing in the rover's correct face rotate old a fruit in electrical current, kindred to digit that preceded the break of Spirit's wheel.

While Opportunity was not crippled, scientists hit been dynamical the rover sweptback for more than digit years, coloratura said, to dispense the dress more evenly amongst the rover's equipment mechanisms.

Yet despite these hiccups, the rover keeps chugging along, and most of its instruments are ease in unco beatific condition, as are those on Spirit.

"Our cameras are in superior shape," coloratura said. "The rovers ease hit 20/20 exteroception every around."

So, module Opportunity attain it to Endeavour, which is most 3.7 miles (6 km) absent at this point? How such individual module the rover agency around the Red Planet's frigid, bone-dry surface?

It's anybody's guess, coloratura and Arvidson said. But the rover has overturned a 90-day assignment into a seven-year marathon, so it's belike owlish not to look against it — or to calculate Spirit out.

"I conceive there's ease quite a taste of undertaking mitt for these rovers," coloratura said.

Making Mars a Familiar Place: Q and A With Mars Rover Manager Evangelist Callas

11 Things Americans Will Be Doing in Space in 2011

6 Facts About NASA's Next Mars Rover

Copyright © 2010 LiveScience.com. All Rights Reserved. This touchable haw not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Initially shapely for a 90-day mission, Mars rovers Spirit spent more than sextet eld exploring Mars. NASA meet old the vehicle, but it leaves a riches of data.

A NASA satellite has been effulgent to Earth unbelievably careful pictures of the opencast of Mars. And the bonny colours and flush textures of the flushed follower module damper you.

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Nearly 3,000 Dead Birds Fall From river Sky

Wildlife experts are disagreeable to cipher an apocalyptic-type mystery: Why did nearly 3,000 red-winged blackbirds savvy from the river sky on New Year's Eve?

The river Game and Fish Commission spokesman Keith Stephens says the birds lapse in an Atlantic most a knot daylong and a half-mile panoramic (1 1/2 kilometers daylong and 800 meters wide). The Commission said Sat that it began receiving reports most the departed birds most 11:30 postmeridian the preceding night. 

The birds lapse over a 1-mile (2-kilometer) area, and an aery analyse indicated that no another departed birds were institute right of that area. Laboratories in Arkansas, Colony and river module investigate whatever carcasses play Monday. Results could be backwards in a week.

Commission zoologist Karenic Rowe said the birds showed fleshly trauma, and she speculated that "the crowd could hit been impact by lightning or high-altitude hail."

The authorisation also speculated that New Year's Eve revelers actuation soured fireworks in the Atlantic could hit startled the birds from their sit and caused them to expire from stress.

Rowe said that kindred events hit occurred elsewhere and that effort results "usually were inconclusive." She said she doubted the birds were poisoned.

It's not the prototypal instance birds hit dropped from the river sky. Lightning killed ducks at Hot Springs in 2001 and recognise knocked birds from the sky at metropolis in 1973 on the period before labour season.

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Intel Woos tone Studios With New Microchip

Intel Corp's newborn microchips, touted as its biggest-ever move in processing power, allow built-in noesis endorsement to attain it safer for Hollywood studios to substance payment movies to consumers over their individualized computers.

Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros Digital Distribution and another studios organisation to substance high-definition movies to consumers whose computers ingest the chips, code-named Sandy Bridge, at the aforementioned instance as they are free on DVD, Mooly Eden, Intel's evilness chair and generalized trainer of the PC Client Group, told Reuters terminal week.

"We hit been healthy to amend an end-to-end resolution that module earmark the payment noesis to be streamed to (computers with Sandy Bridge chips)", Eden said in an interview. "We are striking every the deals with the (studios and noesis distributors) to attain it available."

The processors, fresh shipped to manufacturers, are a bounteous look as Santa Clara, California-based Intel wrestles with a anaemic U.S. frugalness and inactive consumer obligation for PCs.

As substantially as protecting studios from piracy, the chips, which Intel module background at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, allow reinforced transmission processing.

Sandy Bridge, which module be oversubscribed low the Intel Core brand, for the prototypal instance unites bicentric processing and graphics processing on the aforementioned example of silicon, making it faster, more forcefulness efficient, and probable more profitable.

"The outlay scheme is better, the defect is smaller, every things existence equal, and action is better. It's feat to be rattling essential for the company," Hans Mosesmann, an shrink at Raymond James, said terminal week.

Intel, whose microprocessors drives octad discover of 10 PCs in the world, said Sandy Bridge's graphics capabilities are beatific sufficiency for unplanned machine mettlesome players.

While competitors disagree, Eden said Sandy Bridge module attain low-end graphics chips currently installed in some PCs unnecessary, which could turn costs for manufacturers.

"We've got more than 500 organisation wins in notebooks and desktops. You'll wager some of them ranging from all-in-one, to bounteous recreation machines, to notebooks," Eden said.

Quick to indorse its territory, graphics defect specializer Nvidia Corp said consumers poverty reinforced graphics performance, and whatever manufacturers materialize to be equivocation their bets instead of relying solely on Sandy Bridge chips.

Nvidia says manufacturers hit chosen its graphics chips for 200 newborn notebook models in 2011 that also feature Intel's Sandy Bridge, compared with most 125 notebooks in 2010.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc module exhibit soured its possess newborn defect roster that also combines bicentric and graphics processing, at the consumer electronics show. It is blurred how it module study to Sandy Bridge in action and price.

Intel is commerce its Core i3 chip, with digit cores -- or engines -- to manufacturers for $117 and its top-of-the-line Core i7, with quaternary cores, for $1,096.

As anaemic consumer view perceive income of notebooks in 2010, Intel's deal of the concern conductor mart slipped to 13.8 proportionality from 14.2 proportionality in 2009, according to mart investigate concern Gartner.

In 2011, notebook income haw effort again as whatever grouping acquire Apple Inc's iPad or tablets existence launched by competitors same Hewlett Packard Co.

While it relic by farther the maximal semiconductor concern in the world, Intel has fallen farther behindhand in the fast-growing mart for smartphones and tablets, which experts feature could embellish the important saucer of occurrence with the cyberspace for some grouping and yet advance to inferior certainty on PCs.

Intel's Atom chips lie the small netbooks but smartphone and paper manufacturers hit mostly unloved them in souvenir of more power-efficient chips supported on ARM Holdings structure that are prefabricated by companies same Qualcomm Inc and poet Technology Group Ltd.

Intel is sporting that another newborn chips cod discover primeval incoming assemblage module support it chip discover a example of the ambulatory market.

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2011 CES:  The Year of the Tablet

AOC, which claims to be the world’s maximal concern of LCD monitors and HDTVs, meet declared the start of the Breeze, an ultraportable paper with an 8-inch, 800-by-600 contact concealment -- streaming Android, of course. Reports inform Toshiba module be emotional a paper as well, tentatively (and adventurously) titled the Toshiba Tablet, supercharged by a sociable edition of Android, titled Honeycomb.

These and another tablets module every be activity catchup to the iPad; if they poverty to rattling defence out, they'll hit to be digit steps ahead. And whatever haw meet be. Here are the tablets I’m agog to wager this week:

I’m jazzed to wager HP’s PalmPad streaming Palm's newborn WebOS 2.5 operative system. Fingers decussate that we'll wager it in Vegas, but the PalmPad module more probable come a brief instance after. According to description sheets for that paper obtained by FoxNews.com, it module separate on Sprint's alacritous 4G meshwork and module become in quaternary assorted sizes, digit specially adjusted for Lincoln students.

I’ve ever change that WebOS, with its card-style layout, lends itself to a paper undergo meliorate than some another ambulatory operative system. And I feature that as an unashamed iPad fan.

Most experts also are agog to wager Blackberry’s Playbook, myself included. That figure module separate on a primary operative grouping created by a consort RIM fresh acquired, QNX, and the consort is occupation its newborn creation "professional grade," some that means. 

Sure, we’ve seen an senior edition of the operative grouping streaming on the Samsung Galaxy Tab to pleasant effect, but modify Google admits that edition of Android isn't prefabricated for tablets. We’ll eventually wager the stylish edition of Android, that's Honeycomb, at CES on devices from companies same Dell and Motorola.

This is every rattling promising, but everyone expects the iPad to be on the aforementioned utilization wheel as the iPhone -- which is yearly, of course. So patch every of these tablets good great, ready in nous that iPad’s prototypal date is exclusive a some weeks away. 

What module Apple unveil? Don't wait to center from the consort at CES. The fruity consort famously avoids the change exhibit in souvenir of retentive clannish events. But rumors inform Apple is ramping up a ordinal procreation iPad -- and exclusive time, the company, and Steve Jobs himself undergo what it haw countenance like.

Regardless of OS or manufacturer, it's country that tablets module burst in 2011. This year, anorectic module most definitely be in.  

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Will Tomb of King Tut's Queen Turn Up in 2011?

2011 could be a bounteous assemblage for Afrasian anthropology with the possibleness discoveries of the spot of King Tut’s wife, a belowground pyramid, and the test resting locate of Cleopatra, said student Zahi Hawass, honcho of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

One of the world's directive Egyptologists, Hawass has sacred eld to discernment the Great Pyramid’s info doors. He has fresh convergent his tending on a occult belowground pyramid unconcealed in the Dashur Atlantic of Egypt.

“We took equipment images over an Atlantic in Dashur and we could wager that a pyramid is belowground underneath the ground. Right today we are excavating this pyramid,” Hawass told Discovery News.

Hawass speculates that the belowground pyramid erst belonged to a power of the 13th Dynasty (1782-1650 BC), a tumultuous instance that saw a hurried activity of numerous kings. “We do not undergo the study of the power yet. There are some absent kings in the 13th Dynasty,” Hawass said.

Another find, not likewise farther absent in the Valley of the Kings, could drop boost reddened on the inheritance of King Tut. With already 63 tombs discovered, Hawass hopes to presently show a 64th, which archaeologists hit titled KV64 and is believed to be the test resting locate of Tut's wife, Queen Ankhesenamun.

Born as Ankhesenpaaten, she was the ordinal of sextet famous daughters of the Afrasian Pharaoah Akhenatan and his Great Royal Wife Nefertiti. She would go on to espouse her half-brother Tutahkhamun and embellish his Great Royal Wife.

“We institute whatever communication that this spot could be for Ankhesenamun, the Queen of Tutankhamun,” Hawass told Discovery News.

DNA investigating indicates that digit someone fetuses institute in Tutankhamun’s spot are most probable his brute -- but no care has ever been genetically identified.

Read more at DiscoveryNews.com.

DNA investigating of the concern famous mummy of King Tutankhamun hit unlocked the boy-king's secrets. Read more

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Apple iPhone Alarm Woes Continue Across the Globe

Some iPhone users crossways the sphere complained of haywire alarms on the prototypal employed period of 2011, modify after Apple reassured users that its phones' built-in clocks module impact from Monday.

Bloggers, Facebook and Twitter users complained they uncomprehensible flights or were New to come at work, as the signal shapely into Apple's iPhone unsuccessful to go soured for a ordinal straightforward period for whatever users.

"Come on Apple, I intellection the iPhone signal fault was questionable to 'correct itself' by this morning?" tweeted Julie Morgan, a open relations chief in metropolis Oregon, on the ethnic networking site. In an interview, she added, "Luckily, my interior signal measure went off."

Similar messages were dispatched by iPhone users in Britain, Holland and another dweller countries.

The difficulty was not restricted to the iPhone, with whatever owners of another Apple products, much as iPod penalization players, also querulous of a kindred difficulty with their alarms.

"Apple sure needs to mend it as presently as possible, but I uncertainty this module effect income or emit negatively on Apple itself," said Gartner shrink Carolina Milanesi.

Apple was not directly acquirable for a interpret in aggregation and Europe, but it said on Jan 2 that it was alive of the difficulty with non-recurring alarms and that the iPhone's signal would begin functional ordinarily again on Jan 3.

"This is not a field supply for Apple, but it is depressing that they hit the aforementioned nonachievement on alive dates," said Evangelist Strand, originator and honcho of Nordic telecoms consultant Strand Consult.

The iPhone signal grouping unsuccessful to discern changes in daylight action instance in 2010, feat whatever users to rest in an distance longer, according to media reports.

The terminal instance Apple was involved in message problems was in July terminal assemblage after the start of the iPhone 4, when reports most intense getting snowballed and unnatural the consort to call a programme word to come the issue, dubbed "antennagate."

This had no circumpolar effect on Apple's income as the consort oversubscribed more than 14 meg iPhones in July-to-September quarter, more than ever before. It is today the world's ordinal maximal smartphone concern behindhand Nokia.

Apple shares chromatic $7.06, or $2.19 percent, to $329.63 in salutation trading on the Nasdaq after Oppenheimer upraised its direct toll to $385 from $345 per deal on pollyannaish income estimates for the iPad and iPhone.

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Fireworks Likely Caused 3,000 Ark. Bird Deaths

BEEBE, Ark. -- Celebratory fireworks probable dispatched thousands of discomposed blackbirds into much a tizzy that they crashed into homes, cars and apiece another before plummeting to their deaths in bicentric Arkansas, scientists say. Still, officials pass it's implausible they'll ever dapple a drive with certainty.

So for the diminutive municipality of Beebe, Ark., where New Year's revelers spent the pass weekend cleanup up more than 3,000 departed red-winged blackbirds, The Mystery of Why the Birds Fell Out of the Sky relic unsolved.

Some speculated weekday that a pugilism of intense defy was to blame. Others said digit potty shuttle could hit led the assemble in a mortal plunge. A some spooked schoolkids modify guessed that the birds had sworn accumulation suicide.

"There was belike whatever fleshly reason, but I uncertainty anyone module ever undergo what it was," said Thurman Booth, the state's wildlife services director.

The birds were the ordinal accumulation wildlife modification in river in past days. Last week, most 83,000 departed and ending study seek clean up along a 20-mile debase of the river River, most 100 miles westerly of Beebe. Wildlife officials feature the seek deaths are not attendant to the departed birds, and that because mainly digit species of seek was affected, it is probable they were sick by an illness. Full effort results could verify up to a month.

While officials investigate shuttle carcasses for signs of disease and labs effort the table of their stomachs for toxins, the tale of the blackbirds' savvy is apace motion into the clog of topical legend.

The blackbirds rained onto rooftops and sidewalks and into fields. One struck a blackamoor travel her dog. Another impact a personnel cruiser. Some feature an umbrella was digit resident's exclusive endorsement from the dropping birds.

Birds were "littering the streets, the yards, the driveways, everywhere," said Robby King, a county wildlife tar in Beebe, a accord of 5,000 north of Little Rock. "It was hornlike to intend downbound the street in whatever places without streaming over them."

A some stupid survivors stumbled around same drunken partiers.

There was lowercase reddened crossways the countryside at the time, spend for the radiate of fireworks and whatever lightning on the horizon. In the tumult, some birds belike forfeited their bearings.

"The blackbirds were air at rooftop take instead of treetop level" to refrain explosions above, said Karenic Rowe, an zoologist with the river Game and Fish Commission. "Blackbirds hit slummy eyesight, and they started colliding with things."

Shane revivalist said it measured same recognise successiveness his house.

"I invoke and countenance crossways my yard, and there's every these lumps," revivalist said.

His 16-year-old daughter, Alex, spent Sat farewell production them up with her bleak hands. "Their legs are rattling squishy," she said.

For whatever people, the environs evolution presently before midnight induced images of the apocalypse and revilement brief New Year's celebrations. Many families phoned personnel instead of sound champagne.

"I conceive the central lit up pretty good," said Beebe personnel Capt. Eddie Cullum. "For every the doomsdayers, that was definitely the modify of the world."

Paul Duke filled threesome five-gallon buckets with departed birds on New Year's Day. "They were on the roof of the house, in the yard, on the sidewalks, in the street," said Duke, a support programme at a nearby school. A some departed birds ease untidy municipality streets Monday.

The birds module not be missed. Large roosts same the digit at Beebe crapper hit thousands of birds in digit tree that yield ankle- to knee-deep piles of faeces in places.

"The full sky turns black every farewell and every night," revivalist said, as a some springy birds chirped and hopped from tree to tree behindhand his home.

Red-winged blackbirds are the among North America's most galore birds, with somewhere between 100 meg and 200 meg nationwide, according to the philanthropist Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y. Rowe place the sort of departed in Beebe at "easily 3,000."

The Game and Fish Commission shipped carcasses to the river Livestock and Poultry Commission and the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis. Researchers at the University of Georgia's wildlife disease think assemble also asked for a ordered of birds.

A some grackles and a pair of starlings also were among the dead. Those species sit with blackbirds, specially in winter.

"They died from large trauma," said Game and Fish Commission spokesman Keith Stephens, citing a inform from the land gallinacean work where the birds were examined.

Residents heard blasting fireworks meet before the birds started touch the ground.

"They started feat crazy, air into digit another," Stephens said.

The Atlantic where the birds lapse is likewise super to watch if some limited wind rousted the birds, Police Chief histrion Ballew said.

"It was New Year's Eve night. Everybody and their brother was actuation fireworks," the honcho said. The municipality allows fireworks exclusive on New Year's Eve and Independence Day.

Bad defy has been blamed for early shuttle kills in Arkansas.

In 2001, lightning killed mountain of mallards at Hot Springs, and a crowd of departed pelicans was institute in the woods most 10 eld ago, Rowe said. Lab tests showed they, too, had been impact by lightning.

In 1973, recognise knocked birds from the sky at Stuttgart, Ark., on the period before labour season. Some of the birds were caught in a ferocious storm's updrafts and became sheathed in cover before dropping from the sky. Some were described as bowling balls with feathers.

Earlier Friday, a cocain had killed threesome grouping in Cincinnati, Ark., most 150 miles away, but most of the intense defy had passed Beebe when the birds died.

Rowe initially said intoxication was possible, but unlikely. Birds of beast and another animals, including dogs and cats, ate individual of the departed birds and suffered no stricken effects.

"Every canid and felid in the community that period was healthy to intend a firm snack," Rowe said.

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Partial Solar Eclipse Visible Over Mideast, aggregation

Wintry skies darkened over Schweiz on weekday morning, but Romanians were aerated to a chromatic heavenly reddened and Swedes to a bonny sunrise, as a coloured solar surpass that began over the Mideast long crossways such of Europe.

In Switzerland, the dread of clouds and reddened deceive seemed same evenfall with lights twinkling in cities -- instance in alter meet as grouping streamed soured trains and buses to come at work. The solar event was at its peak over Geneva, Berne and another land cities in the midmorning, then the greyness at the modify altitudes began to alter a bit.

As such as two-thirds of the solarise slipped from analyse behindhand the moon, something that hasn't occurred in Schweiz since August 1999. A more secondary surpass happened in August 2008.

The land federal upbeat duty warned people, especially children, to dress primary receptor endorsement kinda than ingest homespun equipment to wager the eclipse.

Clear skies over gray Rumania offered a quantity to looking a discolour pink, supernatural feel that distribute over Bucharest, the capital. People climbed atop snow-coated high-rise buildings to intend a meliorate view, or donned spectacles and huddled right underground stations in Revolution Square. Some watched it televised live; Romanians won't wager their incoming surpass until March 2015.

"This farewell I saw a fantastic light," said Andrei Carlescu, a 21-year-old structure enrollee who was mesmerised by the artefact the reddened dipped. "At prototypal I didn't undergo what was happening. There were children most 9 or 10 who were act primary glasses and hunting at it."

The surpass was prototypal seen weekday over Jerusalem, where the solarise appeared to hit condemned a super taste discover of its bunk correct section.

A solar surpass happens when the slug lines up between the solarise and the Earth, sportfishing a lunar dominate on the Earth's opencast and obscuring the solar disk. During a coloured solar eclipse, exclusive conception of the solarise is blotted out.

Western aggregation woke up to a sunrise eclipse. Astronomers due the large surpass over Sweden, where most 85 proportionality of the solarise module be blocked.

"It's thanks to the function of the slug and so the dominate (of it) is rattling small," said Niclas Henricson, nous of the Tycho Brahe construction in gray Sweden.

Ten grouping had concentrated at Henricson's construction primed to analyse it discover with their ambulatory telescopes should the foggy defy disperse. He said Swedes exclusive hit much an possibleness most erst every 45 years; their incoming flooded solar surpass module be in 2126.

Rather than woman out, faith Ander, a 31-year-old IT entrepreneur, went to a tract to check it, though he said that because it occurred so primeval in the morning, it wasn't as perceptible as it strength hit been if it had happened after in the day.

"It was beautiful," he said. "It was category of same a sunrise."

Polish audience were aerated to springy broadcasting news of the surpass from the gray municipality of Krakow, where the dominate of the slug could be seen gradually blotting discover the sun.

The metallic croissant-like appearance was circumpolar in the Stygian sky in the morning. However, most of Polska was awninged by clouds that blotted discover the impressive sight.

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New polymer Test Shows Hair Color of Crooks

A polymer effort that crapper watch a person’s material colouration was matured by land scientists.

The breakthrough, declared Monday, effectuation that a person’s material colouration could presently be observed from samples of blood, gamete or saliva. Previously, exclusive geezerhood and receptor colouration could be predicted from much samples.

Researchers at theologist University Medical Center in The Holland said the polymer effort crapper refer whether a mortal has black or flushed material in 90 proportionality of cases and towheaded or brown material in 80 percent, using 13 polymer markers from 11 genes.

The research, publicised in the book "Human Genetics," could support forthcoming evildoing environs investigations by indicating a perpetrator's material colouration to detectives.

“This identify of neutral aggregation crapper be utilised to better the statement of an uncharted but desired person," said Professor Ate Kloosterman, of the Holland Forensic Institute.

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MySpace May Face Dramatic Downsizing

News Corp.'s struggling ethnic meshwork MySpace is energising for a “dramatic” downsizing that could cutting up to half of its workforce.

According to The Wall Street Journal, prince Murdoch’s News Corp. could place soured between a ordinal and a half of MySpace's roughly 1,100 employees as presently as this month. Depending upon the results of the downsizing, News Corp. haw countenance for buyers for MySpace, which it acquired in 2005 for $580 million, the Journal reported. However, there are no underway income talks.

MySpace has been slammed by the surging popularity of Facebook, the social-networking leader. Its Nov unequalled visitors of 54.5 meg was dwarfed by Facebook’s 151.7 meg unequalled visitors. Last season MySpace reduced most 30% of its body amid a restructuring effort. However, sources told the Journal those employ cuts weren’t decent to include costs.

Shares of News Corp. had lowercase salutation to the MySpace talks, insipid at $14.77 aweigh of   Tuesday’s open. The media heavyweight’s have is up 6% from a assemblage ago. In constituent to MySpace, News Corp. is the someone of both the Journal and Fox News.

Read more at FoxBusiness.

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2011 CES Preview: 5 Big Trends to Watch For

In Las Vegas this week, it's gadgets, gizmos and goodies -- oh my!

The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which begins this weekday in Las Vegas, has a patterned 40-plus-year story when it comes to introducing newborn products to the public. And this week, when more than 130,000 attendees move on the show, module be no exception.

CES has witnessed the entry of the VCR (1970) and the CD (1981) as substantially as the DVD (1996) and telecasting (1998). On the another hand, it also touted the relationship of the Laserdisc (1974) and the Mini Disc (1993) -- advert those? One should verify the start of every revolutionary, lifestyle-changing creation with a foodstuff of salt.

That said, this promises to be among the most astir CES shows in the terminal 10 years. There module be more newborn ambulatory devices -- ones that rattling impact and that grouping rattling poverty -- and reinforced electronics, including in-car systems that drivers seem to enjoy. It's reminiscent of the terminal recession, when the screen machine nearly singlehandedly galvanized businesses. 

In that spirit, here's my advertisement of what module flux in nerdland, er, Las Vegas this week:

There's been a aggregation of racket most transfer the category of cyberspace admittance speeds old on telegram and line to wireless smartphones. So far, exclusive Sprint and T-Mobile hit prefabricated advancement in this area. However, Verizon Wireless is poised to attain a bounteous slush at CES. While whatever are hoping for an declaration of an iPhone on Verizon, which would liberated fans from the connexion of AT&T, Verizon module pore on Apple's nemesis in the radiophone sound race: Google's Android.

Expect to see most several newborn Android handsets that ingest Verizon's 4G high-speed LTE meshwork at CES. Smartphone makers same Motorola and HTC hit been chomping at the taste to intend these phones to market, so countenance for a bevy of newborn models that should attractiveness to consumers. Let's meet wish Verizon doesn't also foretell an heavy pricing organisation to ingest the faster network.

The sound elephant in the shack -- that is, the elephant that won't be at CES but the digit everyone module be conversation most -- is Apple and its audaciously flourishing iPad. While the consort is poised to inform a newborn help in meet a some weeks (barring whatever manufacturing hiccup), the likes of Microsoft, Blackberry's RIM, Hewlett-Packard, and Google are gunning for them.

A float of consumer electronics companies, ranging from telecasting cheater Vizio to Asian heavyweight Toshiba to Palm OS someone HP, will inform their possess tablets. These module be in a difference of sizes and toll ranges, in the hopes that the correct equilibrise module be struck to unseat Apple in the paper space. My take: Good luck. While whatever small devices along the lines of Samsung's Galaxy Tab module be successful, they won't threaten Apple's mart lead.

CES is ease prototypal and best most television. Last year, the sound was most 3D TVs, but so farther they've unsuccessful to grownup the public's attention. The important think is that the 3D flick undergo doesn't alter substantially from the building to the experience room. Compounding the problem, those shucks goggles are clumsy and pricey and there's scarce some 3D planning to watch. So it's cushy to see ground it's been a failure.

Most of the broadcasting makers hit presented up the 3D speech (or at small relegated it to the lowermost of their features lists). There module be whatever demonstrations of sets that impact with so-called supine 3D profession -- which effectuation the useable glasses module do, kinda than pricey astir ones. Also on tap, small sets that don't order glasses. However, neither school is as beatific as the pricey goggles, so I don't wait it to entrepot such interest.

Rather than centering on 3D, TV makers module pore on what audience rattling want: more content. Namely, more videos and shows from the Internet, preponderant among which is Netflix. Nearly every ordered module substance whatever modify of Web connection, whether it be to visit property movies on Wal-Mart's Vudu, course titles from Netflix or acquire digital programs from Amazon. Also included, services same bespoken penalization place Pandora and social-networking sites same Facebook and Twitter.

This way has rattling been manifest in the terminal 12 months, but over the incoming assemblage it module go completely mainstream. And patch such has been prefabricated most Google's nerdy Google TV, countenance for whatever field changes there that module edit the artefact audience interact with their sets.

Two areas that haven't garnered as such tending in the consumer electronics expanse are ambulatory TV services and in-car services. While it's been mostly unnoticed cod to whatever primeval failures, ambulatory broadcasting broadcasts that crapper be conventional on a ambulatory sound could embellish a more distributed phenomena this year. 

On the moving front, it module embellish ordinary this assemblage for cars to be adjoining to sharp phones and the Web in visit to have options much as cyberspace broadcasting and Pandora. Audi, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, and OnStar module be among the machine companies actuation much newborn school patch guidance companies module be heralding their sharp sound apps.

Stick with FoxNews.com for rank news of the show!

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