As Luo explains, one of JPL's main goals is to build tools to control robots needed for space exploration. Seeing as the gaming industry is already rife with user-friendly controllers ripe for the plucking, it made sense to harness them for the job.
I have a friend who recently started working at JPL. Despite the massive NASA cutbacks (even with a mostly replenished Planetary Exploration budget), he seems very enthused about the big shots they want to take. Europa or bust!
Read More"…our society has become so technologically based that you really can’t be a fully operating citizen unless you understand basic science. How are you supposed to make judgements about the health of your children if you don’t believe in science? How are you supposed to make a judgement about a generation of fuel and power if you don’t believe in science? You can’t operate as a sensible voting member of a democratic society these days unless you understand fundamental scientific principles to a degree."
From an interview of David Attenborough by Brian Cox and Robin Ince. Couldn't agree with this more. And I think it applies not only to operation citizens, but obviously -- and perhaps most glaringly -- to politicians. How do we intend to advance with 75 year old members of Congress who shun even email? How are they supposed to understand NASA's needs, or climate change models, or net neutrality arguments?
Burger recipes by Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.
always reblog.
Still the best.
Yep. Worth another reblog.
Sinatra’s Burger Recipe
Can humans journey into deep space without cosmic radiation frying our brains?
Beyond a few brief trips to the Moon over four decades ago, humanity has never ventured outside of Earth’s protective magnetic field. And while it’s natural to dream of exploring the stars, such voyages may carry impossibly high medical risks.
That’s the finding of researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center, who have undertaken the latest study examining how prolonged time spent in deep space could affect human astronauts. The big issue is radiation - without the planet’s magnetic field to act as a shield, astronauts in deep space would be exposed both to the fierce energies of solar flares and the persistent hum of what’s known as galactic cosmic radiation.
Now, solar flares can be dealt with - we might have to ground our deep space flights for a couple decades when they get really intense, but that’s not the end of the world - but it’s the other, more subtle radiation that is harder to overcome. Prolonged exposure to cosmic radiation has previously been linked to increased cancer risk, cardiovascular problems, and musculoskeletal issues.
But the Rochester study points to perhaps the greatest danger of such prolonged exposure: the degeneration of the brain itself. Using the particle accelerators at NASA’s Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, mice were exposed to levels of radiation that proportionally matched what humans could expect to encounter on a three-year round trip to Mars. The mice were then given a series of memory tests to track how their brains held up in the wake of such exposure.
The results weren’t good. Those exposed to the radiation were significantly more likely than the unexposed control group to fail tests that depended on their ability to recall objects and locations. Worse, these mice’s brains showed clear buildup of the protein beta amyloid - which, in both mice and humans, is one of the clearest hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. The study suggests the exposed mice developed Alzheimer’s in far greater numbers than would be expected, and much earlier in life as well.
Researcher M. Kerry O’Banion doesn’t mince words in saying what this means for future astronauts:
“Galactic cosmic radiation poses a significant threat to future astronauts. The possibility that radiation exposure in space may give rise to health problems such as cancer has long been recognized. However, this study shows for the first time that exposure to radiation levels equivalent to a mission to Mars could produce cognitive problems and speed up changes in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease… These findings clearly suggest that exposure to radiation in space has the potential to accelerate the development of Alzheimer’s disease. This is yet another factor that NASA, which is clearly concerned about the health risks to its astronauts, will need to take into account as it plans future missions.”
But why wouldn’t it be possible to shield astronauts from the harmful radiation? The challenge is that we’re dealing with high-mass, high-velocity particles generated in the crucible of supernovas. Unlikely the stray hydrogen protons produced by our Sun’s solar flares, these particles are so powerful that they can penetrate any standard shielding. Dr. O’Banion and his team used iron particles, and he provides a sense of just how far we would have to go just to give astronauts a half-decent shot of surviving a deep space mission without long-term cognitive problems:
“Because iron particles pack a bigger wallop it is extremely difficult from an engineering perspective to effectively shield against them. One would have to essentially wrap a spacecraft in a six-foot block of lead or concrete.”
Admittedly, in the weightlessness of space, that amount of shielding wouldn’t really preclude the effective functioning of a spaceship, but it would almost certainly mean we couldn’t launch such a craft from Earth. If these neurological risks really are this severe, we might be committed to assembling such heavily-shielded craft in Earth’s orbit - itself a huge engineering task that’s probably at least a couple decades away from being doable.
Indeed, it’s also possible that our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease and various cancers could progress to the point that we would be able to effectively manage or perhaps even cure astronauts’ later medical problems. But if these studies suggest anything, it’s that our next giant leaps into space (including planned missions to an asteroid in 2021 and Mars in 2035) will require several orders of magnitude more knowhow than our trips to the Moon, and not just in terms of spaceship-building. Otherwise, astronauts will be forced to face their greatest tests and make their biggest sacrifices long after they return from Mars.
You can check out the entire original paper over at PLoS ONE.
This research puts a bit of a damper on long voyages, but hopefully some future composite can shield us from toasting our brains on the way to Mars.
This is what the guys are Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers forgot. They forgot that they are a part of a continuum of history, and it’s not about the fucking buck that you make today at whoever’s fucking expense. If there’s not a sense of continuity, a sense of some sort of communal obligation and responsibility, a sense of a future involved in what you’re doing, and a sense of being beholden to the past, you end up being one shallow, greedy motherfucker, just trying to get all you can get.
- Bruce Springsteen. From this month’s Rolling Stone interview with Jon Stewart.
If there’s any question what “Wrecking Ball” is about, well…there you have it.
I find this so cool. And it’s from 1962, so in these relative terms, it happened, oh…last night.
Condense, if you will, the fifty thousand years of man’s recorded history in a time span of but a half century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first forty years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover (himself). Then about ten years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels…The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole fifty-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power…Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now, if America’s new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
So what did we do today? Advanced microchips? The widespread availability of the polio vaccine? The civil rights movement went down sometime in the middle of the night. There’s the rise and beginning of the fall of AIDS, after breakfast (at least in the West). Most gays still can’t marry their partner, but there’s a chance we’ll get to it after lunch. Much of America woke up much fatter than yesterday. Oops. I guess there’s the internet, from half an hour ago, and cell phones, from about the same minute, and then GPS. But how is it that we’ve spent an entire day not pushing out, once again, into the final frontier? I guess everybody wakes up hungover after their 50th. Still.
So, what’ll we do tomorrow? Flying cars? More realistically, we’ll make the same cars we did yesterday. Go back to the moon? That’s so yesterday. Cure cancer? Or will we gain a better understanding of how complicated cancer really is? That’s a rough way to go into the weekend, is all I’m saying.
Carpe diem, my friends. Be mindful of every moment, and ask yourself: how can I change the world today?
How do you start your day?
Probably with a blaring alarm. You open your crusty eyes to the same alarm that told Londoners to get ready for another bombing run. Every morning begins with a new level of fury. Good lord. It’s just not right, people.
I’ve found a new rooster, and his name is Bruce Springsteen. And not just any Bruce Springsteen, but a special track off his new album, “Wrecking Ball”.
The song in question was actually penned a decade ago, but we’ve only been privy to it in live performances, or as a recorded track of one of those live shows. Bruce never recorded it in studio (as far as we know).
Now, you might have heard about Bruce’s new album. It’s angry. It’s all of the best parts of The Rising and his live folk-rock album, Live in Dublin. It’s beautiful, foot stomping music, a ode to the sad state of our country, the way we got here, the people who knowingly brought us to this place, who have more or less walked away scot-free, and finally, to the rest of us, left behind.
But the second half of the album (and it is, in the truest sense, a cohesive album), begins to lift us. It acknowledges the suffering, but looks forward to a better day, however far off it may be.
And this hope crests with “Land of Hope and Dreams”.
This version of the song is nearly seven minutes long. But it’s no “Stairway to Heaven”. After a brief, soulful opening, it punches you in the face with the full power of everything Bruce wants you to feel: empowered, energized, rejuvenated, lawfully, spiritually and morally sanctioned to go out and do your very best. And when you finally reach the sax solo by Bruce’s best friend, the late Clarence Clemons, recorded before his death last year, you can’t help but realize: life goes on. Today’s the day I get up and get it done. I move on, I embrace what I have and work for what I don’t. What I want. What my family needs. We live in a beautiful time and a beautiful country.
If there ever was a “seize the day” track, this is it.
I encourage you to do what I did.
1. Download the song (or the whole album) here, off iTunes. Or, if you use Spotify, go here.
2. Get in your car.
3. Turn on your car.
4. Don’t go anywhere. This is key.
5. Press “play” on the song.
6. This is also important: turn it up as loud as you can take it. It’s going to be overwhelming. That’s ok.
7. Close your eyes and let it wash over you. Don’t check your phone or email, don’t fucking text anybody. Just wait. It’s only seven minutes. No one’s going to miss you. Just release, and let your mind be free.
8. Rinse, and repeat.
If you ever want to see a playoff system for college football’s Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS, formerly I-A), you should be hoping and praying that the University of Alabama earns the number two spot in the final BCS results. Why? Thanks for asking.The BCS is broken. We know this. Just about anyone who’s a real fan of college football believes that a 8-10 team playoff system would be far superior to today’s highly complex and deeply flawed shitshow.
And yet - most of you (that aren’t Alabama players, students or alumni) use one or both of the arguments below as reasons to keep Alabama out of the championship game:
1. Alabama has already faced LSU this season, and lost. A hell of a game among regional and national powers, but a loss is a loss.
2. Alabama didn’t win their conference (the SEC). Teams that can’t even win their own conference shouldn’t play for the national championship.
Over the last twenty five years, college football has emerged as America’s fifth major sport. It’s arguably one of the most prominent sporting leagues in the world. College football now rivals the NFL and major league baseball in many ways: attendance, revenue, merchandise, gambling and passionate fans. It demands to be taken seriously. It’s more popular than the NBA, the NHL, NASCAR, MLS and college basketball.
Here’s where college football stands apart:
Every other major sporting league in the world features teams that are eligible to play or compete for the championship through a “wild-card” or seeded playoff system. That is to say, every one of these leagues - and many others (Champions League football/soccer, for example) - allow, and frequently feature, non-conference winning teams as post-season tournament and, eventually, championship game participants.
There are variations on their terms of eligibility, of course, for gaining this entry: no home games, playing an extra “play in” game, facing off against the top seed in the first round, etc. But the fact remains: college football is the only major sporting league in the world that doesn’t allow non-conference winners to feature in the championship game.
Part of this is due to the fact that the college football season is, as some would say, an endless playoff. If you really want in, you’d better win every game. And yet sometimes, depending on your respective conference, strength of schedule and the play of your rivals, it doesn’t even matter. And yet part of it is due to the fact that for some bizarre reason, we let computers have an overwhelming say in who should be placed into that game, a game played over a month after the regular season ends. Because that makes sense.
Unless, of course, Alabama is named the number two ranked BCS team.
And then we’ll have something new. We’ll be armed with the best real threat to the BCS anyone’s seen since the system’s immaculate inception years ago. We’ll have a rematch. You do remember those, don’t you? That little American thing called a second chance? Why on earth wouldn’t you want a rematch? You do in every other sport.
You do realize that in all of the other major sports, not only do the best teams usually play each other during the regular season and then, often, face off in the championship game, many times they play multiple successive “rematches” for the championship: see the MLB, NBA, NHL and more as examples of a successful “best of 7” format. Of course, best of 7 doesn’t make sense for sports like football, soccer or rugby, lest we want fields littered with broken men (and women). But I digress.
Everything here lends itself to the need for a completely revamped championship, playoff format, but realize this: your arguments for 2011 just don’t make any sense.
That is, unless you like the BCS. When you say “any team that doesn’t win their conference shouldn’t play in the championship game”, you’re siding with the current system. You’re taking a very short term view of things, and aiding the enemy. And unless you’re a player, student or coach from Oklahoma State, you really don’t actually have anything invested in the short term, do you?
Let’s make this very real for some of you.
If you’re a fan of any of the teams below, raise your hand:
Florida Marlins
Anaheim Angels
Boston Red Sox
St. Louis Cardinals
Oakland Raiders
Denver Broncos
Baltimore Ravens
Pittsburgh Steelers
New York Giants
Green Bay Packers
If you raised your hand, I urge you to consider the fact that your team made the playoffs and won your sport’s championship title because you made your way in through the wild-card spot. I repeat: your team may have faltered down the stretch, or played in a tough division, but your team did NOT win your conference. And yet you won your championship. Marlins fans (all five of you), you won twice as the NL wild-card entry.
Again, raise your hand:
New York Mets
San Francisco Giants
Houston Astros
Detroit Tigers
Colorado Rockies
Dallas Cowboys
New England Patriots
Buffalo Bills
Tennessee Titans
Congratulations, and my condolences: your team made the playoffs and championship game through the wild-card slot, but just missed out, and lost in the final moments. Or got blown out. Whatever. The point is, you made it. And you didn’t win your conference.
I haven’t even listed all of the NBA and NHL championship winners who weren’t seeded first, or even second, in their conference (geographically split). Of course, with only two conferences, it’d be pretty boring if only the top team in each qualified. We wouldn’t even need the playoffs. We’d just have one game. Wait a minute…
This year and next should be testaments to how stupid the college football system is. Far away teams joining previously geographically oriented conferences for a better shot at the big game, or one of the big four bowls. Some teams aren’t even in a conference. Some teams already get “at large” bids, but not for the championship game. And that’s because the BCS deal is that the top two seeded teams at the end of the regular season, both teams winners of their respective conferences (to date), play one game four weeks later for the national championship.
Because that makes sense.
Vote Alabama. Threaten the system. Vote for a rematch. Vote for the wild-card this year.
If you look a little closer, you’ll see that this area:
Looks like this:
Friends:
Think of the biggest asshole you know. Now think about that asshole killing a whole bunch of innocent people. You’d want to kick the shit out of that guy, right? Maybe you’re not big on torture. But then you think - fuck it, this guy deserves it. So now waterboarding is cool. Bamboo under the fingernails? Great. Taser to the nuts? Sure. Draw and quarter? Find some horses. Everything’s on the table.
I’m here to say that CANCER is the biggest asshole I know. It’s affected my family, and many of my friends. And it killed one of my best friends. So fuck you, cancer.
Our New York marathon team - 14 family and friends - has raised over $18,000 so far. The marathon’s 85 days away. For every dollar you contribute, we’ll cut off one of cancer’s fingers (cancer’s got a lot of fingers). Ever wanted to cut off some dickhead’s finger? Now you can. We’ll even send you the finger, along with a 100% tax deductible receipt. How about that for a return on your investment? A bloody finger, and less taxes. America’s a pretty great place.
The 14 of us - along with the rest of the LIVESTRONG army - are training our balls off. And in 85 days, we’re going to each run 26.2 miles - IN A ROW. And when you contribute $50, we run faster. And harder. And it hurts more.
So, again, let’s calculate. Donate today and you get:
1. A finger
2. A tax deductible receipt
3. The pleasure of knowing every time you click “donate”, I’m sobbing in an ice bath somewhere.
So let’s torture cancer, friends. Let’s cut this bitch. Let’s make a massive dent in the fight against one of the worst diseases the world’s ever seen.
Donate today. Make a difference. Join our crusade.
http://run.livestrong.org/teamls2011/quinnemmett
As ever, Strong Like Bull.
Quinn